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Godel showed a fundamental limitation of logical systems. Like I said - you can disprove a system using the system, but you can't prove one. I learned about all this from classes taught by the Philosophy department in school - though there was similar content in CompSci classes from a very different angle.

I guess it's a matter of debate whether you call Proof Theory (and its parent, metalogic) math or philosophy or both, but you seem to be calling all systems of formal reasoning "math", which isn't what most people mean. Certainly there are journals with "Philosophy" in the title where such results are published.

If one looks at actual attempts at ethics, basic principles are never developed completely in vacuum. There are always some real world situation or pattern that the proposer of the axioms is trying to abstract. Math or logic is very important to evaluating choices of axioms or to precluding certain sorts of axioms in a simple way.

You won't get far in physics without math, but they're nevertheless distinct fields. Math is a tool used in many fields.

Why should we expect that such a structure can exist?

Because it hasn't been proven not to, and it's the job of philosophers to take on such problems. Whenever a good, practical answer is found to such fundamental questions, it stops being philosophy and becomes some new discipline. Sure, it's quite rare, but it's important when it happens.

I think the original paper on this is by H. M. Gutman. For an intro to more modern methods see Regis and Shoemaker's 2007 paper.

Juliane Mueller has some working code available.

.@DumbSci Sherwood has credibility problems. As do you, to put it mildly. cc: @DanaRohrabacher @tan123 @ImaBannedd @SteveSGoddard [Lonny Eachus, 2015-09-29]

Is that ad hominem really the best you can do? Note that Carl Mears (scientist for the RSS dataset Lonny likes to cite) said that Steve Sherwood "knows a lot more about tropical convection than I do."

So is Lonny also going to accuse Carl Mears of having credibility problems? If so, Lonny should prepare to make a really long series of accusations. Notice that Sherwood was actually just referring to a standard result in Ingram 2013. So Lonny's going to have to extend his ad hominem to William Ingram as well.

And note that Soden and Held 2006 fig. 3 (left) is just a mirror image of the Ingram 2013 figure that Sherwood referred to while explaining that the implications of a missing hot spot are "roughly nil". Since they're saying the same thing Sherwood (and many other scientists) are saying, Lonny will have to keep throwing ad hominems at scientists until he breaks his keyboard.

Or, and this is just a suggestion, perhaps Lonny Eachus would consider reading those papers and actually trying to learn from them?

The premise behind these simulations is that giving directions to crowds will improve flow of people.

It's a mighty big assumption that the folks in the crowds would follow a signal to "slow down". Between the culture in general (ever see a tidy British style queue in the middle east?), and the general human dynamics of large crowds of people, I don't have much hope of this being a success...

...The activity of the crowd is determined by a very weak signal, if you can give them a strong signal instead they'll probably follow it.

Imagine you have a bunch of giant LED billboards overhead showing everyone in the crowd "SLOW DOWN" or "STOP" or "TURN RIGHT AT 42nd STREET".

A baffle sends a strong signal that is impossible to ignore. Cylindrical pillars seem to be among the most efficient at transmitting this signal in the right directions through the crowd so that it slows them in time to prevent crush injuries without panicking anyone into a stampede. Forget cultural stereotypes and objective cultural differences, at this scale all Muslims, Christians, Soccer fans, British Royals, bipeds, quadrapeds... behave as particles in a non-Newtonian fluid. If these particles encounter a barrier faster than the signal from the barrier can propagate against the flow of the fluid, you get a shock-wave not unlike a sonic boom.

Those papers have nothing to do with the von Storch paper. Von Storch's central argument that "we find that the continued warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level." is wrong and based on faulty statistical analysis.

We can talk about the global warming 'hiatus' separately, but the fact of the matter is that you really can't make a strong conclusion either way based on the data we have. The time period in question is just too short. These links put forth an alternate explanation based on faulty ocean temperature measurements that seems pretty plausible to me:

http://link.springer.com/artic...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

And that's what makes Ada95 (and subsequent versions) so interesting from a language design perspective. Ada95 built on the Ada83 language (which itself built on Pascal, as well as CLU and other research languages), adding OOP (including supporting concurrent objects in a way that I haven't seen in other "modern" programming languages in this era of multi-core processors). There are design trade-offs, and these are well-documented. If you're interested in such things, the published design team rationale documents (for both Ada83 and Ada95) should be required reading. Ada83: http://www.adahome.com/Resourc... Ada95: http://www.adahome.com/Resourc...

What Ada95 accomplished was to graft a full OO design mechanism (i.e. inheritance) , while preserving type-safety (for scalar types, as well as "objects" or classes), keeping the safety properties (e.g. impossible without unchecked conversion to dereference a null pointer), and providing nearly 100% backwards-compatibility with Ada83. (There were a few inconsistencies, but these were at the edges of the language.)

Oh, and Ada2005 adds support for pre-conditions and post-conditions that matches what Eiffel now provides for defining and enforcing contracts. And it does so while providing the SPARK subset that supports theorem-proving for proof-of-correctness (including concurrent programs), starting with "cannot generate runtime error". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... A lot of this grew out of David Luckham's work at Stanford on annotation languages such as ANNA and TSL, see http://www.springer.com/us/boo...

Indeed, Ruddiman 2003 (PDF, 2013 AGU lecture) explored the effects of old-fashioned deforestation.

List of retracted papers

One also wonders if this Anonymous Coward is a wife beating rapist pedophile. What, I'm just asking the question, not making any accusation or anything! I'm just saying, we don't know you're not.

But, in case anyone else is actually wondering what the papers really are about (as opposed to mister AC who is asking a loaded question in an attempt to create doubt where none exists), it's a mix of biomedical stuff. Probably boring stuff unless you're in the field (but I don't know enough about biology/medicine to know for sure).

You can search the Springer page for the list:
http://link.springer.com/search?query=The+Publisher+and+Editor+retract+this+article+in+accordance+with+the+recommendations+of+the+Committee+on+Publication+Ethics+(COPE)&date-facet-mode=between&facet-start-year=2015&previous-start-year=1995&facet-end-year=2015&previous-end-year=2015

More commentary at RetractionWatch: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/17/64-more-papers-retracted-for-fake-reviews-this-time-from-springer-journals/

They're part of the trend in mens watches that say 'I need to assert my masculinity by showing that I can lug a big lump of metal around on my wrist all day'.

It's probably more of a women respond to displays of wealth trend. They really do. The good news is that it's a lot easier to change your socioeconomic status than your physical features.

For those interested in the current state of cathodes in li-ion batteries and the research underway to improve them, there's a good paper here. The short of it is that they do keep making incremental improvements, and might continue that way for a long time, but they don't seem to be as subject to the "big leaps" that people are working towards on the anode side. There's been some interesting work since then, though - for example they don't mention anything about the recent work on vanadium/boron glasses (~300Mah/g initial capacity (twice that of LFP), without as much degradation as with forms of crystalline vanadium oxide)

Honestly, I don't expect any "big leaps" overall in battery tech. But based on everything I've seen that's already "in the pipeline", incremental improvements in li-ion battery capacity should be expected to continue to improve for at least 5 years, and probably much longer. There are a number of proposed techs for what will come after li-ion. I personally wouldn't be surprised if lithium-sulfur becomes the next usurper - it has huge capacity, generally common materials, there's been a lot of work towards overcoming its main downside (short lifespan), and there's already a low-volume manufacturer out there PolyPlus with limited use in special applications.

Marketing is by the College Textbook definition, the act of communicating that you provide something that meets someone's wants and needs and provide utility.

Your college textbook is way out of date.

http://link.springer.com/artic...

Neuromarketing is an emerging field that bridges the study of consumer behavior with neuroscience. Controversial when it first emerged in 2002, the field is gaining rapid credibility and adoption among advertising and marketing professionals. Each year, over 400 billion dollars is invested in advertising campaigns. Yet, conventional methods for testing and predicting the effectiveness of those investments have generally failed because they depend on consumers’ willingness and competency to describe how they feel when they are exposed to an advertisement. Neuromarketing offers cutting edge methods for directly probing minds without requiring demanding cognitive or conscious participation.

It's called the Maunder Minimum for a reason. There is definitely a correlation with sun activity... and my guess is that it's better than the correlation with volcanism. I don't know that for sure, but that's my best recollection. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-15]

It is easier to believe the documented condition of the sun going quiet for a few hundred years was the major factor behind the cooling than it is to believe one or more volcanoes were going off constantly for a few hundred years creating an ash blanket over the Earth for the whole period and caused it. [dunkindave, 2015-07-15]

Miller et al. 2012 says the Little Ice Age "can be linked to an unusual 50-year-long episode with four large sulfur-rich explosive eruptions".

Of course, the Maunder Minimum also contributed to the Little Ice Age. Regarding other contributors, Ruddiman 2003 (PDF) says "plague-driven CO2 changes were also a significant causal factor in temperature changes during the Little Ice Age (1300–1900 AD)."

There's been some debate about Ruddiman's "early anthropogenic" hypothesis. He discusses the LIA in his 2013 AGU lecture at 38m29s. Briefly, plagues killed many people in Europe and the Americas during the LIA, and their farms were overgrown by forests. That sequestered atmospheric CO2, causing even more cooling.

The records were showing a cooling trend until they were recalibrate.

Some of the recalibration were obviously valid. Others are not as clear cut. For example, the orbital decay correction was entirely valid.

Regardless, even the corrected datasheets don't show warming if you look from 1998 to today
http://data.remss.com/msu/mont...

The whole "pause" thing which is argued started in 1998 and what caused people to start looking for where the heat went. You're saying into the ocean... because it isn't in the air.

70.0 - 82.5 is the global table. The other columns address different regions.

As to sea level... from church:
http://static-content.springer...
From the EPA
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...
the actual graph:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...

Do you see the problem?

The sea rise is linear. Our rate of emissions have not been exponential. Explain how the CO2 even correlates with that when the trend lines don't match?

The rate of change in emissions should be reflected in the rate of change in the environment assuming these systems respond quickly to these changes.

What we're seeing is LINEAR changes to exponential inputs. That implies the two variables don't even correlate much less one being caused by the other.

Also sort of interesting is this data on on the CO2 concentrations:
http://co2now.org/images/stori...

I find it interesting that basically was flat from 58-64... as you can see it ramps up going faster and faster towards the present.

Anyway, I'd like to see if we can get a single point emission of CO2... something large enough to be detectable globally for some period of time. I think a large volcanic erruption might create such a rise... and then I'd like to see how long it takes for the trend line to return to normal.

Your IPCC citation assumes 120 years. I don't understand how that is possible. We're emitting 1 percent of total atmospheric carbon every year and the rate of actual change in our environment is about 1/3rd of our emissions.

That implies that 2/3rds of our emissions are being taken out of the atmosphere and not re-emitted ANNUALLY. If 2/3rds of our emissions are being removed and not re-emitted annually... then what does that do to the life expectancy of emitted CO2?

The IPCC figure you're citing is 120 years... that seems obviously impossible. And your other figures you were cited were ranging from 100-30 years... which means we have range of 30 to 120 years just from your citations.

We're talking about the 6 foot tall man give or take 30 feet again. As to serious debate, you're in one right now to the extent that any such thing can happen on the internet. I'm not interested in your political references. Stop making them. I'm utterly indifferent to how many people agree with you.

As to your data on increases in carbon... I didn't say carbon wasn't increasing. I said that the rate of increase in the carbon doesn't match the increase in our emissions. If the time it stays in the atmosphere is 120 years as the IPCC says or around the 100 year range that wikipedia says... then we should see a closer match between emissions and atmospheric concentration. The discrepancy can only be explained by the biosphere sinking the carbon... possibly in the oceans if you like but still out of the air. And even the 30 year figure seems dubious to turn an exponential curve into a linear one.

As to Turley et al 2006, you're skipping over my request for a longer trend line on pH valu

As to the link, I think I cited the wrong link...

The new link does show corrections to a single satellite dataset - but there's nothing there even faintly close to the 0.6 degrees/year you were claiming. There are both positive and negative corrections that are a fraction of that, as they discover and account for factors like orbital decay.

There is your citation. Don't be stubborn or proud. It will undermine your intellectual credibility. Admit that and move on ;-)

As to zeta joules, I can't process that information... That means I can't audit it. And I don't like evidence that can't be audited.

Perhaps you should engage in further study, then - and until then, you'll have to accept that this evidence has been audited by expert reviewers, both before and after publication; by people who have enough experience in the field to understand what heat content is. This is how science works in every field.

That said, I don't understand your confusion. How would a temperature figure help here? Do you just want to see an overall degrees/year amount so you can decide subjectively if it's "significant" or not? It's rather more complicated than that.

18810.48 cubic km of water

Did I make another error here? Because these numbers are still no where near what they're talking about. That shows nearly five times the melting of that estimate. That's not even close.

That's because you're calculating from incomplete data. The 200 Gt/year ice loss figure I quoted was an estimate from a single paper that dealt only with the major ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. To get a more accurate figure for all the sea level rise inputs, you also have to factor in the melting glaciers everywhere else in the world. This is further complicated by the fact that ice melt in different areas can contribute quite differently to sea level rise (e.g. if it's floating, or if shrinking ice extent decreases albedo, resulting in warmer water and thus more moisture uptake in the atmosphere, to name a couple of factors). Then on top of this you have to include the effects of thermal expansion, which is around 25% of the total rise.

For a more detailed discussion, you could start with Meier et al 2007, which for example estimates that 60% of sea level rise actually comes from glacier melting, not including the two ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic.

you're going to have to show a graph that predates the heavy emission of fossil fuels.

Take a look at Figures 5 through 7 in Church et al 2011, that I already linked to earlier.

Obviously satellite data doesn't go back that far, which is what Shepherd was looking at, but we have fairly good logs of tidal data going back hundreds of years. These are confirmed by sedimentary cores going back to 1300.

That shows a much lower rate of rise... I think they're saying inches per century

This is only looking at ice melt in some specific areas. A direct quote:

we quantify mass-change trends in 19 continental areas that exhibit a dominant signal... the net effect was + (1.1 ± 0.6) mm/year.

This is consistent with our calculations above, as it includes areas beyond Greenland and the Antarctic. But it does not include all global sources of sea level rise; besides, we can measure that directly.

What's more, the rate of sea level rise has itself been increasing. Prior to 1900 it was close to 1mm/year, but in the las

That's quite a rant there - assumptions, ad hominems, sweeping declarations, invective, ironic projection, the lot. In fact, pretty much everything except data.

Oh you want peer reviewed rebuttals? Done:

Science & Education, really? Remember what I said earlier about crap publications that would publish anything? Yeah. It's not exactly Nature, is it? Where is its peer-review policy anyway?

Shame the article is paywalled so we can't examine it, but these guys did. And if it's the article I think it is, applying Monckton's own peculiar standards for handwaving-away any papers that aren't explicit enough for him, only makes the numbers for rejection of AGW look even tinier, at a mere 9 out of 11,944 papers reviewed. And nowhere is there anything to back your claim that the consensus figures "included papers that argued against climate change".

And of course, Cook's paper isn't the only one that arrived at ~97% consensus - from Oreskes to Powell, they all give similar results. Plus, of course, the long list of scientific institutions that have confirmed the findings of AGW, and none dissenting.

[vague accusations & unsourced claims of bias & corruption omitted]

ice age predictions from the 1970s [...] New York was supposed to be under water by 2015

Ah, specifics. Cite the papers that predicted these, please. Or are you getting misled by bad reporting again?

Every year you get weaker and look more foolish

Every year, the surface temperatures rise, ocean temperatures keep going up, sea levels rise some more, global ice mass keeps decreasing - the ongoing trend is obvious everywhere to anyone who opens their eyes, and comes from climate scientists around the globe who couldn't care less about all that Republicans vs Democrats nonsense. The argument about what to do about global warming is certainly political - but the data aren't, and wild, unsourced claims of massive political bias in the field only make the accusers look like the foolish ones.

I didn't just cite one source, half wit.

I cited a lot of things. And mostly recently I cited a peer reviewed paper.

Choke on it.

Did you say check on it? OK! Here's a complete list (as of this writing) of your citations in this thread in chronological order:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvfAtIJbatg (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.populartechnology.n... (Site is a one man operation that doesn't identify the operator or his alleged "staff". Attempts to debunk Cook paper by cherry-picking results from a nebulous survey.)
http://www.nature.com/news/pub... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://articles.mercola.com/si... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://arstechnica.com/science... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.the-scientist.com/?... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04... (no mention of the Cook paper)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... (opinion piece written by a lawyer (who doesn't appear to have ever practiced law) who claims to be a "trained scientist". The article relies exclusively on research done by unnamed "investigative journalists" at populartechnology.com - a blog that by all appearances is operated by a single unidentified individual.)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... (first mention of a legitimate source rebutting the Cook paper)
http://link.springer.com/artic... (legitimate source debunking Cook)

So what have we got here...looks like a bunch of citations that have nothing to do with the Cook paper, one citation from a clearly bogus website, One citation written by a hack lawyer relying exclusively on the aforementioned bogus website, one citation from a pop-sci website alluding to an authoritative source, and (finally) a citation pointing to a legitimate source. And guess what? I've recognized your final source's potential legitimacy multiple times. You should probably take that as a win and call it a day.

In any event, don't you think you could've saved yourself a lot of time, effort, aggravation and ridicule if you'd have just kept your mouth shut until you actually come across a legitimate source? Instead, your process (if you can call it that) of supporting your arguments is to link to sources that you haven't subjected to any scrutiny whatsoever. It's a textbook example of a lack of critical thinking skills.

As to your claim that there is only one peer reviewed paper refuting your peer reviewed paper...

You're making things up again. I made no such claim. And for the last time, Cook's paper isn't MY paper. The only time I addressed it's validity I expressed skepticism of it's conclusions. Since you're having trouble remembering, here, let me help you:

"To be honest, I

Its difficult to keep all the anon cowards straight... which is probably why you fucks don't log in.

Anyway: http://link.springer.com/artic...

Boom shaka laka.

...which has fuck all to do with your pathetic dishonesty regarding the link you asked for. You're a joke. And more people are realizing it every day.

Its difficult to keep all the anon cowards straight... which is probably why you fucks don't log in.

Anyway:
http://link.springer.com/artic...

Boom shaka laka.

Oh you want peer reviewed rebuttals?

Done:
http://link.springer.com/artic...

Your man actually tried to publisher another paper that corrected some of his errors while reasserting the same position... his paper didn't even make it past peer review this time because unlike before... people were paying attention.

His methodology was shit and his entire process was more akin to what you see out of creationists.

This is why this field of science has gotten a bad reputation. Its been polluted with political interests and corrupt cronies seeking cash and status.

Its sophistry and cargo cult science.

And because I know the truth is just a word to you... let me hit you where you live... you're losing the political argument as well.

I know that's all you really care about and like all sophists you have made the cardinal error that you can win by trying to win above all else.

Where as the philosophies that gave birth to the discipline of science itself don't try to win. They instead try to be right. And in being right... they ultimately win.

Your victories thus far are transitory and will be remembered with scorn. Eventually people will smurky openly at everything you're saying the same way we do at the ice age predictions from the 1970s.

What you people don't understand because you have the memories of goldfish is that this argument has been going on long enough for your predictions of the future to catch up with the present.

For example, New York was supposed to be under water by 2015.

Well... that didn't happen did it?

Like the joke about the old Soviet Politburo, "The future is always the same... it is the past that keeps changing"...

You have to keep retroactively altering your own history to white wash your unbroken series of failed predictions.

The models are updated at least once a year to bring them in line with what ACTUALLY happened and what the same models predicted a year ago is conveniently memory holed... again and again and again.

And then when anyone contradicts you, you pull out this argument from authority or popularity that "well, we have most of the scientists with us"...

Only you don't. At best you have half of them. That's not conclusive of anything but a controversy.

And given how you demonize anyone that contradicts you, a fair number of people either don't want to get involved and keep their opinions a secret or pretend to support you out of fear for their jobs.

And it is in this environment that you proclaim your consensus.

You're a shit merchant. And the more people try your wares, the fewer buyers you're going to have.

Time is on my side... Every year you get weaker and look more foolish... and every year people like me appear more credible. The only way to reverse your decline in credibility is to stop trying to win and instead try to be RIGHT. Actually right. F' the politics. Try to ACTUALLY be right. No shaping your data to fit your desired theory. Just take the data in and form a theory tabula rasa from the data. Try it.

And then you might actually start to get some credibility back. The price will be you're going to have to change your argument. Because your argument isn't right. It just is what the politicians find the most convenient. And it isn't going to win in the end.

http://link.springer.com/artic...

And your phase 2 point only got to that number by citing any credence to the notion of AGW even marginally as being evidence of 100 percent approval of the IPCC position.

Never mind that only about .3 percent actually held that actual view.

All the other positions were more nuanced. And by that definition most 'deniers' are supporters of your position because most "deniers"... a sad attempt to equate people that question your premise with holocaust deniers... but the thing is that most of the "deniers" believe in some amount of AGW... they just don't think it is as big a deal. But using Cook's methodology, they'd all be AGW supporters.

Your paper is bullshit.

And not only was it bullshit but Cook TRIED to publish another paper after this one to correct mistakes in the first one... and because people were actually paying attention... his paper didn't even pass peer review. That's how full of shit it was.

So no. Try harder. You don't impress me.

Yes they do work. If I'm feeling down and I take a placebo pill, It's likely I'll feel great again. That's the definition of 'working.' When you take a placebo pill it causes real biochemical changes in your body: http://link.springer.com/artic...

And as for control groups, most often they use a treated group, a placebo group, and a non-treated group. And I never said homeopathy is anything other than a placebo.

You completely lack knowledge of medical science. Your opinion is worthless.

The pill was not responsible for the changes. Your decision to do something you're expected to make the change was.

You can get the same effect from mediation, or being told someone is parrying for you (note the actual parer isn't necessary).

Yes they do work. If I'm feeling down and I take a placebo pill, It's likely I'll feel great again. That's the definition of 'working.' When you take a placebo pill it causes real biochemical changes in your body: http://link.springer.com/artic...

And as for control groups, most often they use a treated group, a placebo group, and a non-treated group. And I never said homeopathy is anything other than a placebo.

You completely lack knowledge of medical science. Your opinion is worthless.

If that's true, Jane/Lonny Eachus should be able to understand why I'm challenging his baseless accusations of fraud

AFTER BEING ASKED MULTIPLE TIMES, YOU HAVE NOT PROVIDED A SINGLE EXAMPLE OF A "BASELESS" ACCUSATION OF FRAUD!

Just like when you claimed I accused "friends of yours" of fraud... before Cook et al. was even out. WHO??? You don't have any examples. I call bullshit. Not one example, after plenty of time to dig through your (rather enormous, it seems) records of my statements.

dishonesty, and incompetence in mainstream climate science. After all, I believe people should know the truth.

Yes. And we have lots of examples of dishonesty and incompetence. Well-documented, as as often as not peer-reviewed. Would you care to try to refute them? Even if you manage to refute any which are on that page, I have files full of more for you to try.

You still have yet to show me guilty of actual dishonesty myself.

You and I both know those weren't the scientists you were originally referring to when you claimed that your hero "Steve Goddard has indeed uncovered some fraud in the data manipulations."

Ridiculous. I know no such thing, since I don't know who you are referring to. You refuse (or are unable) to provide any examples.

Every time you try to pull these ridiculous childish tantrums with no real evidence, you further cement my impression that you're emotionally a grade-schooler, in PhD clothing.

... Do you claim that the Cook et al. paper was NOT a fraud? Simple question. Yes or no? ...

Yes.

Hahaha. I think that's really hilarious. So you dispute the findings of this paper? And you intend to refute a specialist in scientific validity?

I will be fascinated to see your published refutation.

Until then, you can keep getting stuffed. You still haven't identified those "friends" of yours you claimed (and still seem to claim) I accused of "fraud". As for the rest: dishonesty, lies, etc... it has been amply demonstrated and I need no defense.

I did not claim all the scientists are dishonest. But some of them have been proved to be. I did not claim they're all lying. But some of them have been proved to be. I did not claim they're all frauds. But some of them have been proved to be.

Beyond reasonable doubt. And those are the ones I refer to. I include Cook et al. 2013 in that group. And there isn't a soul on Earth to whom I will apologize for that, since it's the demonstrated truth.

http://link.springer.com/artic...
Abstract
It is shown here that Newton’s gravity law can be derived from the uncertainty principle. The idea is that as the distance between two bodies in mutual orbit decreases, their uncertainty of position decreases, so their momentum and hence the force on them must increase to satisfy the uncertainty principle. When this result is summed over all the possible interactions between the Planck masses in the two bodies, Newton’s gravity law is obtained. This model predicts that masses less than the Planck mass will be unaffected by gravity and so it may be tested by looking for an abrupt decrease in the density of space dust, for masses above the Planck mass.

You are reading the 2007 "summary for policy makers" (I'm sure you'll be surprised to discover that the summaries are often at odds with the reports themselves).

Given you demonstrated inability to read an understand entire paragraphs, I sincerely doubt that the summaries are at odds with the reports as often as you believe them to be. I find it more likely that are motivated to see disagreements where there are none.

Here's a link to the latest report (pdf): https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together"

I put that last bit in bold so you can see they are indeed talking about "the sum total of all anthropogenic factors".

Did you finish reading the paragraph? Apparently not. The next line says:

The best estimate of the human-induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period (Figure SPM.3).

Then did you look at the graph? Apparently not. The graph shows total anthropogenic warming as higher than observed warming.

It's clear you've never read the consensus report (couldn't even find it!) yet you have the gall to say I'm an ass?

What else should I call someone who takes a single sentence out of context and tries to use it to prove the exact opposite of what his source says? You are categorically, 100% wrong. The source you chose to support your argument explicitly and in plain english says that I am right and you are wrong. Then they put a graph next to it to reinforce that fact, and somehow you manage to miss both? You're wasting my time, jackass.

Why can't we just have a normal conversation about this?

Because you choose to act like an ass? Your only source explicitly says you're wrong, so why are you wasting my time?

Most of the predicted heating comes from climate sensitivity estimates, not CO2 directly. And the climate sensitivity estimates keep getting lower. Example: http://link.springer.com/artic...

Here's a tip: If you want to provide evidence of a trend, you need more than 1 data point.

So do the impacts from aerosols. Example: http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...

Same here, this is a claim of a different trend with exactly one data point.

In other words, the latest research suggests even less warming than what the "muted" IPCC report predicts.

Personally, I wouldn't use a blog post that speculates about what a not-yet-released report might say as evidence for my case.

Obviously you have not done your research here either, although I can understand why a person might think that at first glance. They were behind that "97% agree" study that was quoted by Obama. Unfortunately it a was really really bad study. I like to think that even people who disagree will call out really really bad science when they see it, but apparently not. Integrity of science be damned.

The problem is that people like you who apparently wouldn't know science if it bit them on the ass, keep claiming that good science is bad and bad science is good, then you accuse anyone who disagrees with you of having no integrity...

Here is one of many scathing indictments of their "work":

You are reading the 2007 "summary for policy makers" (I'm sure you'll be surprised to discover that the summaries are often at odds with the reports themselves).

Here's a link to the latest report (pdf): https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assess...

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in GHG concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together"

I put that last bit in bold so you can see they are indeed talking about "the sum total of all anthropogenic factors".

It's clear you've never read the consensus report (couldn't even find it!) yet you have the gall to say I'm an ass? Why can't we just have a normal conversation about this?

Most of the predicted heating comes from climate sensitivity estimates, not CO2 directly. And the climate sensitivity estimates keep getting lower. Example: http://link.springer.com/artic...

So do the impacts from aerosols. Example: http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...

In other words, the latest research suggests even less warming than what the "muted" IPCC report predicts.

Actually, it's [skepticalscience.com] quite good. They provide clear, well written and referenced explanations based on actual scientific research.

Obviously you have not done your research here either, although I can understand why a person might think that at first glance. They were behind that "97% agree" study that was quoted by Obama. Unfortunately it a was really really bad study. I like to think that even people who disagree will call out really really bad science when they see it, but apparently not. Integrity of science be damned.

Here is one of many scathing indictments of their "work": http://www.joseduarte.com/blog...

Problem is, you'd end up screwing over the poor - that is, all the people who cannot afford a Prius or similar hybrid/electric vehicle.

Don't the poor usually walk, ride bikes, and take mass transit? Did you know that the poor love tolls more than other income classes because tolls displace taxes the poor would otherwise have to pay?

It would also jack up the price of nearly anything that is transported over the roads...

Actually, what jacks up the price is when we don't charge users full price for use of the roads, leading to a distorted, inefficient market for transportation.

A very simple Google search for swarm and robot will pop a horde of papers. Frankly, I've seen this research go back more than fifteen years. I'm too lazy to find the oldest source, but here's a bunch of different swarm papers:

http://link.springer.com/artic...

http://link.springer.com/chapt...

http://link.springer.com/artic...

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cf...

Sometimes you can find things under the term cooperative control. There's entire books written about these algorithms:

https://books.google.com/books...

So, yes, the Navy's system is cool. It is not revolutionary. It's an application of existing methodology.

A very simple Google search for swarm and robot will pop a horde of papers. Frankly, I've seen this research go back more than fifteen years. I'm too lazy to find the oldest source, but here's a bunch of different swarm papers:

http://link.springer.com/artic...

http://link.springer.com/chapt...

http://link.springer.com/artic...

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cf...

Sometimes you can find things under the term cooperative control. There's entire books written about these algorithms:

https://books.google.com/books...

So, yes, the Navy's system is cool. It is not revolutionary. It's an application of existing methodology.

A very simple Google search for swarm and robot will pop a horde of papers. Frankly, I've seen this research go back more than fifteen years. I'm too lazy to find the oldest source, but here's a bunch of different swarm papers:

http://link.springer.com/artic...

http://link.springer.com/chapt...

http://link.springer.com/artic...

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cf...

Sometimes you can find things under the term cooperative control. There's entire books written about these algorithms:

https://books.google.com/books...

So, yes, the Navy's system is cool. It is not revolutionary. It's an application of existing methodology.

That's not all that frequency does! Reading this, "Low Intensity Electromagnetic Irradiation with 70.6 and 73 GHz Frequencies Affects Escherichia coli Growth and Changes Water Properties". So there are probably many unknown side effects that will start showing once this is in offices all over the place.

Ok, opening up the blood brain barrier is bad. Got it.

Ah, microwave radiation opens up the blood brain barrier.

- Take Back Your Power

Hardware has no copyright protection or trademark assertions if you do not copy any 'art' included with the board.

I searched out of curiosity and found this: "The survey indicates a loophole in intellectual property (IP) laws that fails to offer sufficient protection to layout designs on PCBs. Accordingly, there may be good reasons for conferring IP protection in the layout designs on PCBs as a form of sui generis IP right." Sounds like you're right, for now at least, and for circuit boards. Chips are another matter, reverse engineering them is considerably more difficult, they are encumbered by patents, and making your own is much more difficult.

Just because there are idiots that do no research at Wired, does not mean it is news.

Richard Stallman authored the article; it discusses whether his ideas regarding free software apply to hardware designs. For Stallman, of course, there is an important distinction between "open source" and "free".

Cook's paper started with 11,944 papers and categorized them on a scale of 1 to 7. This categorization was not blind, nor impartial - it was done by volunteers from Cook's acquaintances and forum goers - some of whom later admitted to falsely categorizing papers. Additionally, a number of authors later objected to the categorization of their papers, pointing out that the paper did not make the claims Cook suggested it did. Finally, these 12,000 climate papers actually included hundreds of psychology studies, marketing papers, and surveys of the general public as if they were peer-reviewed and published scientific studies.

Cook then eliminated all papers from categories 2 through 6. The only categories that remained were the ones that explicitly stated that either Global Warming was happening and mankind was THE cause, or that there was no global warming at all, ever.

There were exactly 41 papers left that agreed with his position, that Global Warming was happening, and had been caused by Man (at least 50%).
There was 1 paper that claimed that the climate had never changed, ever.

There were 11,902 missing or rejected papers.

Read more in a peer-reviewed, journal published paper that dissects Cook's false claims.
"Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change"

Here ya go Sparky. Here for a summary article.

Happy?

driven by Big Agrochem trying to make shitloads of money,

You mean like every other conventionally bred seed they also sell? Better take a stand against conventional breeding. Or maybe you mean Golden Rice, developed by the International Rice Research Institute, or the Rainbow Payaya, developed by the University of Hawai'i, or any number of other GMOs I could mention that have bugger all to do with corporations and are developed by independent university, public, or NGO scientists (who nonetheless are likewise opposed while anti-GMO people ignore them or have the gall to accuse them of being corporate or even vandalize publicly funded GMO research).

acquire copyrights and patents on key food crops

You mean like conventional breeding already does and has been for a long time? You mean the patents that expire and are used in public domain works? By the way, do you have a fair alternative?

'bundle' their own special seeds with their own special pesticides and weedkillers.

Like conventional breeding? Also, selling two products that go together is immoral now? Really? Guess Nintendo must be absolutely abominable for selling gaming systems and the games that go with them for decades, those monsters. By the way, are you referring to the special herbicide (not insecticide as you wrongly imply) that went off patent in 2000? And furthermore, did it ever occur to you that maybe farmers have adopted the herbicide tolerant crops in such large number for a good reason?

You don't even want to take a tiny, tiny risk of killing off pollinating insects or having 'terminator' genes or antibiotic markers jump species.

The refusal to accept any risk at all is a flawed ideology. That's the kind of thought that leads people to refusing vaccines on a 'risk aversion basis.' When one considers your rational of terminator genes (never even been used) and horizontal gene transfer (common only on an evolutionary time frame, and no more or less likely to happen to a transgene than any other gene; maybe I say we ban conventional breeding because I don't want rice sd-1 to jump species hmm? What risk do you see the NPTII gene you refer to having anyway?), your argument falls apart completely.

only if you own shares in big agro (unless you think buying expensive seed and complimentary chemicals from multinationals and not being able to re-plant harvested seed is somehow going to cure third world hunger).

You forgot increased yield, decreased insecticide, safer for farmers and consumers, lower environment impact by replacing harsher herbicide and soil degrading tillage, and saving an entire industry from a devastating virus. You mean beside those benefits you conveniently neglected to mention? And even if none of that were the case, you'd still be wrong because you'd be saying that the present use of a technology is not good therefore there is no good use for it. That's completely absurd, and made all the mor

Try looking for real perspective than repeating FUD and misreading facts;

http://link.springer.com/artic...

http://www.reuters.com/article...

http://blogs.scientificamerica...

http://news.discovery.com/eart...

http://www.insidescience.org/c...

Human health is a complex topic with many interwoven factors that interact with each other. In general, many people who catch many "diseases" don't show significant symptoms because their immune system deals with it and limits the scope of the spread. I was not easily able to find that information about measles from a few minutes of trying though. It seems a bit controversial... Maybe you know if off-hand?
"Risk Analysis for Measles Reintroduction After Global Certification of Eradication"
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/...
"Convention holds that asymptomatic measles infections are rare, but there is a significant body of published evidence of acute measles infection among people who are exposed to measles virus but who do not develop classic symptoms [3-5]."

When you boost your immune system, you make it more likely the spread will be contained. Even for measles, the degree of symptoms you show and how long they last is in general probably going to reflect your health state (and also genetics though), as suggested in a link a bit further below to a study from CDC researchers. Humans are exposed to all sorts of potentially problematical viruses and bacteria every day -- doctors especially. A healthy immune system shrugs most of them off (with some dangerous exceptions, especially like Ebola).

A study specific to measles and nutrition, from India:
"Interaction between nutrition and measles"
http://link.springer.com/artic...
"Much has been written about the synergestic interaction and infection in turn adversely affects the nutritional status. Although this relationship is well documented with respect to bacterial infections, it is not clear whether nutrition can influence the incidence or course of viral diseases. Measles is one of the most common viral infections that occur during childhood. The interactions between measles and nutritional status acquire considerable importance in situations where as a result of inadequate food intake, chronic malnutrition is widespread among children."

And:
"Undernutrition as an underlying cause of child deaths associated with diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria, and measles"
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/cont...
"Results: The RR of mortality because of low weight-for-age was elevated for each cause of death and for all-cause mortality. Overall, 52.5% of all deaths in young children were attributable to undernutrition, varying from 44.8% for deaths because of measles to 60.7% for deaths because of diarrhea.
Conclusion: A significant proportion of deaths in young children worldwide is attributable to low weight-for-age, and efforts to reduce malnutrition should be a policy priority."

So if 50% of the death rate is from obvious malnutrition, could at least some of the rest be from more subtle dietary issues?

In the USA from 2010, just to show how the USA is in theory increasingly at risk of an epidemic from malnutrition among children:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
"According to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17.4 million American families - almost 15 percent of U.S. households - are now "food insecure," an almost 30 percent increase since 2006. This means that, during any given month, they will be out of money, out of food, and forced to miss meals or seek assistance to feed themselves. Even those who get three meals a day may be malnourished. Americans increasingly eat cheap, sugary foods whose production is underwritten by government subsidies for the corn and dairy industries. As the New York Times reported this month, the USDA loudly promotes better eating habits while quietly working with Domino's to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese. [There are healthy fats though, including from ch

given that the toll road will be paid for eventually by taxpayers

No, that's not a given.

and helping to drive the wedge deeper between the haves and have-nots?

False.

We are already 'engineering the climate' - we're just doing it randomly and without plan.

If the price of oil goes down and everybody starts burning more of it, we're engineering the climate with more CO2.

If we chop down hundreds of square miles of amazon rain forest and replace it with cattle ranches we're engineering the climate with more methane.

If we want to start engineering the climate in a more directed manner, we MUST control these activities as well. Trying to control some of the strings while others are being yanked in a haphazard manner is not a practical approach.

The Kyoto Protocol has many critics - and with reason. It is clumsy, largely ineffectual and tainted by accusations of corruption. But real practical climate engineering will only be achieved by some sort international cooperation along these lines.

1. The scientist in question is arguably the foremost in her (admittedly obscure) field, the study of microbial mats and their effects on sediments on Earth. She literally wrote the book on the subject and has a very extensive publication record on it. She is a well-known and respected researcher for this work, although admittedly it's obscure stuff at the interface between sedimentology and paleontology.
2. The pictures themselves are quite clear and are from the mastcam on the Curiosity rover. They aren't distant blurry pictures with huge blocky pixels and horrible processing, although they could be better. The structures interpreted from them, not so convincing, IMHO, but that has little to do with image resolution issues.
3. She's an assistant professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia.

I think you scored a 0.5/3. Don't trust your prejudices.

That being said, I think the interpretations in the paper aren't correct.

Microbial mat surfaces are sometimes tricky to recognize on Earth versus ordinary non-biological sedimentary structures, but that outcrop surface on Mars is a pretty poor place to try to make the distinction. It's not a freshly-broken and exposed bedding surface. It's been strongly differentially weathered and sculpted by wind erosion. Worse, it's draped with modern-day dust. Even if this was a surface with microbial mat structures on it, the first thing you'd need is a broom to clean it off to get a better look.

Noffke is indeed a world expert in recognizing modern and ancient microbial mats. That's not an exaggeration. She's literally written the textbook on it, for Earth. But it's quite a stretch for any of these Mars examples. The other pictures in the published paper aren't any better. A lot of them look like "modern" weathering (for whatever counts as "modern" weathering on the surface of Mars), rather than features formed at the time of the sediment deposition and subsequently exposed.

Doing some chemical analysis, as mentioned in that popular article, wouldn't be much help either. Many Earthly structures like this have not a scrap of organic material left from the mat. It's just the shape that reveals the former presence of the mat on the sediment surface.

"Just the right properties" is not really needed. Simple gas pressure can overcome the need for specially prepared palladium. That is, the classic CF experiments were done at ordinary atmospheric pressure, so it takes a long time for the deuterium to permeate the palladium and, yes, apparently the palladium's molecular structure is important in helping CF to happen (if it happens at all). However, if you simply take a piece of palladium and put it in a pressure chamber, and pump in lots of deuterium gas under pressure, well, not only does it take less time for something interesting to happen, the results are highly repeat-able. Here are some links: old internal NASA paper, a formal journal publication, and a 2010 overview.

There's also a lot of unknowns about whether the CH4 even makes it to the surface. There's a lot of microbial activity between the sea floor and surface that loves to eat methane and release CO2:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...

http://link.springer.com/artic...

Tons of CO2 is a lot better in the atmosphere than tons of CH4.

That the trees aren't rotting, even after 30 years, is as visual as it gets

You're about the 30th person to mention this little trope, and as with the previous 29, you've plainly not read the article you link to. I'll give you the link again, so that you might just possibly do yourself the honour of reading what you link to, so that you can avoid looking quite so thoroughly like someone who doesn't read what he links to. It is actually a pretty basic skill in sciences and other nerdish occupations.

Have you read it now?

Did you see the bit where they put some numbers to the actual results. Did you see the bit where that said that in the most contaminated areas leaf litter loss was reduced by 40% ; that's a 40% decline, not a 100% decline.

Oh, I'm sorry, I accidentally linked to the original abstract, not to some overblown puff piece written by some click-baiting journalist looking for a scary headline in the confidence that no-one will actually read beyond the headline. The paper title that the authors chose to use is "Highly reduced mass loss rates and increased litter layer in radioactively contaminated areas", which conveys a slightly different impression to "Oh My Invisible Pink Unicorn the Fucking Sky is Falling!" or whatever the original trope was.

Now, I'm not going to claim that a 40% reduction in decomposition rates is insignificant. It is quite a substantial result. But it's also one data point in a steadily changing scenario. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, dose rates would have been much higher (particularly because of the iodine-131 radiation), and that does seem to have had a major effect immediately after the accident. But as the radiation levels have declined, the area is being re-colonised from outside areas (and of course, adaptation of the resident populations to higher radiation)), and as radiation continues to decline the differences between high and low radiation areas will also continue to decline.

In fact, I'd make a prediction : by the time another half-life of caesium-137 has gone by, the differences in decay rate between high and low radiation areas will have disappeared into the statistical noise. You'll note from the news articles and the paper linked to above that there's a 20% variation between litter loss rates in the lowest-contaminated sites studied, so you've got a signal to noise ratio of about 2 at the moment, and that is only going to go down. (Processing the backlog of under-decayed material might take another half-life or so, depending on background decay rates.)

The fieldwork was done in Sept 2007 to July 2008, so just over 20 years after the accident. So I'm revising my above prediction to having negligible difference in decay rates between low and high radiation areas by about 2030.

Since a large part of the original article and this whole thread is about at best shoddy if not out-right biased journalism, you might have thought it would be a good idea to actually watch out for shoddy if not out-right biased journalism in stories people link to. It's the sort of thing I'd rather expect of the nerds and scientists that this site thinks are it's audience.

That the trees aren't rotting, even after 30 years, is as visual as it gets

You're about the 30th person to mention this little trope, and as with the previous 29, you've plainly not read the article you link to. I'll give you the link again, so that you might just possibly do yourself the honour of reading what you link to, so that you can avoid looking quite so thoroughly like someone who doesn't read what he links to. It is actually a pretty basic skill in sciences and other nerdish occupations.

Have you read it now?

Did you see the bit where they put some numbers to the actual results. Did you see the bit where that said that in the most contaminated areas leaf litter loss was reduced by 40% ; that's a 40% decline, not a 100% decline.

Oh, I'm sorry, I accidentally linked to the original abstract, not to some overblown puff piece written by some click-baiting journalist looking for a scary headline in the confidence that no-one will actually read beyond the headline. The paper title that the authors chose to use is "Highly reduced mass loss rates and increased litter layer in radioactively contaminated areas", which conveys a slightly different impression to "Oh My Invisible Pink Unicorn the Fucking Sky is Falling!" or whatever the original trope was.

Now, I'm not going to claim that a 40% reduction in decomposition rates is insignificant. It is quite a substantial result. But it's also one data point in a steadily changing scenario. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, dose rates would have been much higher (particularly because of the iodine-131 radiation), and that does seem to have had a major effect immediately after the accident. But as the radiation levels have declined, the area is being re-colonised from outside areas (and of course, adaptation of the resident populations to higher radiation)), and as radiation continues to decline the differences between high and low radiation areas will also continue to decline.

In fact, I'd make a prediction : by the time another half-life of caesium-137 has gone by, the differences in decay rate between high and low radiation areas will have disappeared into the statistical noise. You'll note from the news articles and the paper linked to above that there's a 20% variation between litter loss rates in the lowest-contaminated sites studied, so you've got a signal to noise ratio of about 2 at the moment, and that is only going to go down. (Processing the backlog of under-decayed material might take another half-life or so, depending on background decay rates.)

The fieldwork was done in Sept 2007 to July 2008, so just over 20 years after the accident. So I'm revising my above prediction to having negligible difference in decay rates between low and high radiation areas by about 2030.

Since a large part of the original article and this whole thread is about at best shoddy if not out-right biased journalism, you might have thought it would be a good idea to actually watch out for shoddy if not out-right biased journalism in stories people link to. It's the sort of thing I'd rather expect of the nerds and scientists that this site thinks are it's audience.

Well, professor Jim Woodward has been working on his Mach/Lorentz thruster for a while now and has a working setup in the lab, and multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals. With his theory it is in fact possible to build startrek-style impuls engines, warpdrives and wormholes. And it all fits in our existing theoretical knowledge. He has a book out, published by Springer-Verlag (they don't publish nonsense):

http://www.springer.com/engineering/mechanical+engineering/book/978-1-4614-5622-3

Making Starships and Stargates
The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes

Series: Springer Praxis Books Subseries: Space Exploration

Woodward, James F.

2013, XXVI, 279 p. 92 illus., 85 illus. in color.

I think it's the gas chromatograph rather than the mass spectrometer (surely chirality doesn't measurably affect the mass of a molecule?), but they're built in to the same instrument, COSAC. This abstract sounds like a chromatograph to me.