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NASA Says 2005 Could Be Warmest Year Recorded
Ant writes "CNN reports that a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s." From the article: "While climate events like El Nino -- when warm water spreads over much of the tropical Pacific Ocean --affect global temperatures, the increasing role of human-made pollutants plays a big part."
eh...
It will only be the hottest year on record for a year or so.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You apparently want Earth colder and Mars hotter. Make up your mind!
Sudden global climate change is a serious issue that should be dealt with, but it is interesting how on one side NASA feels it's possible to control and affect positive massive global climate change on Mars but fears comparatively tiny changes on Earth.
I'm a big tall mofo.
human-made greenhouse gases
I just made some of those myself.
Already in Canada, we have had some January temperatures of ONLY -35 C when normally we get some days of -37 C
Definitely warmer this year!
Apparently Slashdot doesn't wanna gimme karma to dish out, so here's my endorsement.
Girls with even less clothes, is not cool?
No me lo creo http://barrapunto.com/articles/05/02/13/091250.sht ml Esta vez hemos llegado antes
...we live on Earth!
Well... We've had one of our colder January's in a while here in South Australia - hardly used my swimming pool compared to last year.
Where the hell is global warming when u need it?
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
El niño :D
Just a one- or two-degree change in temperature can lead to disease outbreaks." -- Drew Harvell, Cornell University Marine Ecologist
Two planets meet in space:
First planet: "You're not looking too well! Are you ill?"
Second planet: "Yeah, I got homo sapiens!"
First planet: "Never mind, that's one illness that quickly runs out. You may get some fever because of all the greenhouse gases, but in the end, they'll just wipe themselves out..."
Which way are we going today?
We should think of the future, and of the planet we'll be leaving to our children. Clearly someone should take out all the environmentalcases, so that our kids won't have to put up with them.
I find Americans to be, on balance, very intelligent and well-informed. They tend to hold views similar to those of intelligent, well-informed people of other countries, with two exceptions:
(1) Gun control. Way more smart Americans believe in the right to carry a weapon than smart non-Americans. Most of the rest of the Western world thinks the US is kind of insane on this issue, actually.
(2) Global warming. It is near-universally accepted outside the US that this is happening, and that humankind is responsible. But many smart Americans doubt this.
I resist the urge to inject my own views here because I simply wanted to point this out. It's odd.
I should buy some cement.
the coldest year on record
the wettest year on record
the dryest year on record
the fewest storms on record
the most storms on record
Depending on where you live, your exact location could have any of these conditions. It's funny how the most generic weather predictions can always be proven true.
All in all, 2005 looks to be pretty scary. I wouldn't go outside, based on NASA's findings.
---gralem
It's interesting that the year following a strong earthquake or tsunami is usually slightly warmer than average. I wonder what will people do when thanks to foolishly burning oil and coal we will have no polar ice and ozone keeping us cool. Isn't it time to use hydrogen as fuel? Hydrogen + oxygen = pure water. Simple as that. Is there any other reason than shady business in the middle east that stops us from using clean and cheap energy today? Is it more profitable for certain people to start wars and control oil than to do something good for the entire humanity? I blame people who vote for immoral politicians. In democracy people can have exactly the government they want. So I ask: why do people want wars? Why do people want the greenhouse effect? This is something I seriously cannot understand.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Frequently asked questions about the science of climate change
I find it very helpful.
The Earth's 'normal' temperature isn't what we are used to anyway. Our civilisation has developed entirely in the aftermath of an ice age, and the Earth is still warming up after that. It has ups and downs as well - the Romans grew vineyards in England, yet in the 18th century every winter was so bad that major rivers froze over.
The best thing that we can do is adapt to what is inevitably going to happen - our emissions are just pushing it along a little faster. If Kyoto will only delay the inevitable by 10 years, then why bother with it - just use the money you'd spend on it on actually preparing for the aftermath - sea defences, river defenses, control of potential arid areas, moving people from houses that were built unwisely on flood plains.
And for those Brits that think that the UK will actually become a nice place with global warming, think again! If the Atlantic gulf stream gets disrupted, or moves south, then we'll get colder whilst the rest of the planet gets hotter.
i'll give you a week in my nome timeshare for a week in your timeshare in boca raton
come to think of it, nevermind... 50 or so tropical hurricanes are forecast for this year
in alaska
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We have a government that does pretty much what we tell it because we have two guns for every three citizens and a tradition of cleaning house when needed. You can forget that self defense and sporting use stuff you here - its all about keeping the state in line.
Global warming is deadly serious business and anyone with half a brain sees it coming. You're thinking of the Christian right behind Bush - they believe in this thing called 'the end of days' - this Christian prophecy makes it OK for them to ignore long term issues like global warming. We're hoping they're the first to starve when the troubles begin
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Do a little research on "Clean Hydrogen Power" Coal. All hydrogen for use in fuel cells is wrought from coal in the ground... It's a big anti-earth conspiracy of pig-men, just like in "Captain Planet" Blegh. I think we need to start transitioning, because eventually it may be possible to use sea water as a source of hydrogen, but with modern electrolysis, the process is more expensive than drawing the same from coal, or (I think) oil. And in any case, where do you get the electricity for the electrolysis? Nuclear, oil burning, coal burning power plants.... maybe coupled with a few solar plants, but even geo-thermic power is having disasterous short-to-long term consequences in Northern California and Iceland, the two places where more than a town's worth of power is geothermic.
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
Read Andrew Bolts column to discover how you are being lied too.
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish). And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Your sig says "Proud patriot and republican voter". Congratulations you are the first republican I have met who has doesn't believe his party has a monopoly on patriotism.
Global warming can be a difficult concept to discuss because it can have such far reaching implications and primarily deals with what we, as humans, have a very difficult time understanding, the future. Barring some new technology that makes renewable energy very inexpensive, it seems nothing significant is going to change.
Here's a website I found with a good summary/organization of global warming impacts happening everywhere. http://www.odysen.com/news/Environment.php
If we have a 'day-after-tommorrow'ish' winter coming anyways then I want a couple years to sell my house and enjoy the warmer weather.
Nasa says 2005 budget could be lowest recorded.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
So, your argument is, since the Bush and his handlers and loony supporters expect good things from judgement day, they're not worried about looming disasters, in fact they welcome the end.
How is this sensible?
There may exist controversy around the topic of global warming and global warming may just be part of this planets natural way of evolving into whatever global climate is next. There were many types of global climates in the past and there is no proof that humans are the ones causing this temperature change.... and I read somewhere that termites and cows produce more green house gases than humans....
But if the fear of global warming causes people to adapt a cleaner and healthier lifestyle then so be it and i'm all for it and infact there should be active participation by all people to keep the enviornment clean.
People should, however, learn to share their concern about global warming with other global disastors happening.. or waiting to happen.. Illiteracy rates, population explosion, terrible health care for people, etc.. should all be taken care of and they all pose a huge short term risk which is much greater than the risk of global warming.
There's no denying that global warming is happening (at least in the short term). It's the cause that that's uncertain. The dinosaurs had much higher global warming but we have yet to find a single dinosaur factory or dinosaur SUV. Unless the dinosaurs ate a huge number of baked beans, I don't know how they could be responsible for generating a significant amount of greenhouse gases..
Even if we accept the hypothesis that people are responsible for global warming (and that all other factors are insignificant this epoc), mindlessly focusing on greenhouse gases may distract us from the real cause. Personally, I think that if we're the major cause, that deforestation is a much bigger cause since plans are great CO2 to O2 converters.
Religion and Science have never mixed. Let's look at this objectively and other polarizing issues disassionately. Science has never proved a thing. It has only shown that under certain controlled conditions, that a certain hyponthesis has a certain probability of behaving a certain way. That's why Newton's Law, Quantum Mechanics, and Relativity are all true even though they tell dramatically different stories. Simply, they are each true under different controlled conditions.
We don't have multiple worlds with life on them to experiment on to set our controlled conditions. All we have is this one. It's a diverse world with many regions and many conditions. Coming up with a comprehensive theory that cannot be disproved with 99.99% accuracy is going to take time.
We know the temperature rises, we know know earth changes. - We think we might have something to do with it.
It won't be the hottest year on record for long.
The only uncertain thing about global warming is when mankind will realize that the end of that development is to be avoided.
One can say "only a 1 or 2 deg. Celsius". In fact, first it is a mean temperature, second, the climate might turn out to on the verge of some major deterministic chaos state.
As an example, during the so called Little Ice Age the global temperature dropped by about 1 deg. C, but it caused the following: (from Wikipedia)
Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages. The River Thames and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping.
The chaotic nature of weather patterns might, in turn, hypothetically cause that some very small change causes a major switch, i. e. in sea currents. I do not know if anyone now either predicts or excludes for sure any such event, though.
So, concluding, I think that we do not really know how much serious to the climate the global warming is.
It is good to have guns, because it is good for the government to be scared of the people. POINT (and in America, we often wonder why the rest of the world doesn't get this)
The second issue is more complicated and there are several sources to this image of America not caring about the environment. But first, you must realize that the liberal left-wing in America are the most die-hard extremists imaginable when it comes to the environment. Nobody in the rest of the world seems to notice our extremists that are pro-environment. However, their zeal induces an equal and opposite passion from our right wing.
The net result? You don't see our left wing, because their alignment with you makes them invisible. But our right wing, with their obnoxious stance on the environment sticks out like a tennis-ball sized wart on our faces. Part of their ability to act that way is as the parent poster pointed out, due to their blind faith in what their religious leader, George Bush, tells them.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
CNN's crediblilty has been on self destruction for the last year or so. Their stories have been filled with hype and falsehoods on the hope that their ratings will not continue to fall.
There are always options, never failures.
an accurate forcast for two days out in Oklahoma, and not in the middle of the summer with a high presure sitting on top of us (upper 90s, sunny, 70% humidity), then I will believe them.
Forcast: Partly cloudly and a high of 41
Actual: 1 inch of snow, high of 33
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
How about a "nuclear winter"?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."
-- Governor George W. Bush, Jr.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
We could easly reduce our greenhouse gasses very simply. Just a few little things like better insulation, solar heaters, and this http://gfxtechnology.com/ little gadget here to recycle waste heat from drain water. If everybody got one of those, we'd reduce our CO2 by about 1/3, not to mention the cost savings on heating.
hand in hand don't they?
Where I live crime went down and continue to stays down because of concealed weapon permits and a requirement that all homes should have a gun on the premises (people can get exceptions for that). Gun control only puts the control back into the hands of the criminal. However that is another argument.
Global Warming is happening but what defines global warming isn't agreed upon. So we have 50+ years of good recordings and they consider that a baseline? Just a few years ago they were attributing the drought like conditions here in Georgia as part of Global Warming, up until we started going back over our rainfall average. Now this upcoming predicted wetter than normal Feb is also because of Global warming?
Who the hell would buy such malarky?
El Nino's and similar oceanic events have drastic and measurable affects on the weather. If it moves we can see a nearly immediate effect. Man "might" have a similar strong effect on the environment but it cannot cause rapid shifts in the weather that changes in the ocean or the effects of the sun.
I agree that we cause changes in our environment. I do not agree that we do as much as most politically charged scientist think, let alone the bash-Bush/America crowds that infest the Global Warming debate.
Having had relatives who visited Eastern Europe I suggest Europeans look in their own backyards for some of the worst abuses ever recorded. If they were in that condition in the 90s I cannot imagine what some areas in Russia are like. Follow up with visits to certain Asian cities which have such pollution the air is hard to breathe yet mysteriously Kyoto barely mentions curtailing them.
If you want America's cooperation then apply the same rules worldwide. Do not attempt to single out America just because its more successful than your country.
I think we're going Waterworld today. It is "cool" and "pop culture" to say that our esuvees are causing the destruction of the earth, because we all hate the rich people who buy them.
I personally am waiting for the satisfaction of the prediction from the 70s that we're entering a new Ice Age. I want more skiing, damnit!
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
I am in the middle of reading Michael Crichton's book State of Fear. It is a novel but based on solid science. In the book there is an eco-terrorist group trying to create some disasters to make its point that dramatic climatic change is going to destroy the world. The good guys point out that while while the average air temperature at the Earth's surface has increased by 0.06 C per decade during the 20th century, and by 0.19 C per decade from 1979 to 1998, the average temperature in Antartica has decreased and the thickness of the ice there is increasing. See article in Nature. This is important since Antartica has 90% of the world's ice. Greenland has 4% and the rest of the world combined has only 6%. So even if the world's temperature rises, there appears to be no danger of the sea level rising dramaticly.
Crichton overall message is that the scientific evidence for global warming is thin and that the environmental movement, ignoring science, has gone off track. He thinks we live in a 'State of Fear,' a 'near-hysterical preoccupation with safety that's at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism'.
Personally I think there has to be a balance where we work to protect the enviroment but do not have to tramatize our kids with scary tales of the world ending in their lifetimes.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
An Interesting URL for those that have time to read it : http://www.foe.co.uk/pubsinfo/briefings/html/19971 215150013.html
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
I know this because George Dubya (&Co.) has
told me so. And I have it on good authority
that he gets his info directly from THE MAN.
Anyway, what is the problem with NASA? Aren't
they supposed to present a unified front of
THE party line, like the rest of the Executive
Branch? Do they really want to jeopardise their
funding (or risk another SST being used for
target practice by US Space Command)?
Come on, NASA! Toe that line! Tote that bale!
Get onboard the Bush BS bandwagon, or you'll
get "Bush-whacked"!
Thank god the air conditioning works in my H2!
Football is not that thing with the round ball. That's a bit of, er, pansy sport.
Football is the best sport. Period. YOu've got to play it to understand. It kicks ass. And when you watch great athletes play. Wow.
Right now, I'm crying, because the football season is over. Thinking about the college draft...
Chicks dig a cut penis.
Seriously. You would get more poon (well, maybe not you) if you were circumcised.
Female circumcision == sickening and wrong
Male circumcision == more healthful, better sex, more women.
Dude, its not even a choice.
I tought that NASA meant National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Now we all know why the space shuttle are grounded
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
You live in a "republic" where your government is decided by the STATES ...
... and not the biggest lobby ...
:
...
... Hence its not the gun killing you its going to be me and its your fault you let me have a gun.
In America ( wich is not exclusively the United States ) "MOST" people dont carry a gun around and DONT own a gun either.
In a Democracy its the people who vote for the government and when the government is elected by the public the public vote with the enviroment law
I have a test for people like you
- You have a pencil wich can be used as a weapon.
- You have a base-ball bat wich can be used as a weapon.
- You have a knife wich can be used as a weapon.
- You have a gun wich can be used as a weapon.
- You have a Military Machine gun wich can be used as a weapon.
I am going to give you 1 meter of distance between you and I , when you say start, I start going and try to kill you, you can only run as fast as you can. If I fail I switch to another weapon.
I will start with the Military machine gun
Its not my fault if your going to be dead I am a people killing stupid people who think gun have another purpose then to kill
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
The same people who can't get a 90 day weather forecast right - claim that we little ants can change - the change that's happening for the past 50 or 60 billion years. There's no proof that we humans are causing the warming.
It's also pollution, destruction of ecosystems, overpopulation and all that. We are fooling around with a hideously complex closed system where one thing depends on another in ways we do not understand. Instead of being careful with our planet, we cause change - mostly negative - and totally ignore that in a closed system, all this stuff goes somewhere.
CNN reports that a weak El Nino and human-made greenhouse gases could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept
It should be 'CNN reported', not 'CNN reports' because we all read this 2 days ago on CNN. Honestly Slashdot, can you at least keep up with the news. Even if it isn't great news, the whole point of reading the news is to get CURRENT events instead of LAST WEEKS events. I know, North Korea was telling us they had nukes on the same day, so everyone probably missed this one right?
thanks USA for farting on the world
with your proletarian SUV.
We should consider passing environmental legislation over every volcano currently active because of the amount of smoke, gas, and ash they release into the environment. Seriously people, do these things think only of themselves?
Esoteric reference.
And Journalistic credibility Too!
This crap is as "Scientific" as the "wounded Gaia" theories bandied about after the recent Tsunami.
No need to RTFA the summary and the source were more than enough.
I'm sorry, did you just ask how Bush's belief in judgement day is sensible?
What kind of question is that?
You seem to be missing the point.
Human activities are making a significant contribution to the global climate change? I think our species may be having delusions of grandeur here.
Probably excellent if you live in northern latitudes (like central cancada or finland)....but probably BAD if you live in Florida or Mexico :(
Global warming is unlike any other environmental issue. Usually the health hazards of a pollutant like asbestos or benzene are well documented at the level of the individual subject. Estimating the hazards they present to the environment and the public as a whole is mainly a problem of scaling so that we can limit average exposure rates.
Not so global warming. There is good direct evidence suggesting global temperatures have indeed been rising lately. Weather watchers throughout the literate world have been recording local temperatures for about two centuries. These data show that temperatures today are higher than in the early 1800s and that there has been an upward trend during the past half century. However, the exact cause of this warming is still uncertain.
For periods between the dawn of literacy and the early 1800s, one has to rely on anecdotal evidence to estimate temperature patterns. For example, some of the few people who knew how to write (mainly nobility and clergy) made observations in their letters and journals about early snows, good crops, and the like. This evidence suggests that there have been several fluctuations in temperatures during the past few millennia. For example, glaciers advanced throughout the world between 1400 and the late 1800s-- the so-called Little Ice Age. The Middle Ages, in contrast, appear to have been distinctly warmer.
For the period predating written records, there is only circumstantial and inferential evidence: tree rings from thousand-year-old sequoias, layers of snow from core samples taken in Greenland, and the like. The main problem with these data is that our samples are limited and that inferences usually depend on several interrelated variables. For example, we know how snowfall correlates with temperature today, but this relationship could have been different 10,000 or 100,000 years ago because of differences in geology and vegetation cover. Also, any amateur weather watcher knows how much precipitation can vary among sites separated by just a few miles.
All of this leads to the big question: Did human activity--in particular, industrial activity and the burning of fossil fuels--contribute to recent warming? This is the key to the recent debates. After all, if human activity is just the proverbial ant on an elephant's buttock and has had just a small effect, any effort to reverse the current warming trend by regulating the economy would be foolish and futile.
That is why it is important to understand that so-called evidence of human factors in global warming is completely different from evidence that has been used in any other public policy issue. In fact, it is hardly "evidence" in the conventional sense of the word. Arguments that humans are causing global warming are in fact based mainly on interpretations of extraordinarily complex mathematical models.
The problem is not simply that these models are complex but that their complexity leaves a lot of room to debate their conclusions. Most analyses claiming that human activity contributes to global warming rely on the results of general circulation models (GCMs). These models portray the earth's atmosphere as a network of interconnected cells. They postulate parameters defining how outside factors affect each cell (e.g., how much solar energy is absorbed by the air in a cell) and how each cell affects its neighbors (e.g., how fast is the solar energy in one cell transferred to the ones next to it).
Needless to say, the results of a GCM depend a lot on the assumptions you make. How big should each cell be? What is the effect of water vapor? How much heat and carbon dioxide does the ground absorb? Are there factors that have been previously ignored? Do these factors attenuate heating--for example, does airborne dust reflect a lot of sunlight into space? Or do they accentuate it--for example, do hydrocarbons absorb and retain heat?
As one adds more variables and interrelationships to any model, one needs more data to estimate their effects with confidence.
I think they use RNG to predict the future.
Talk about global warming as if it was a bad thing... BKm in South Dakota.
Thanks for pointing us to that site...it is very information packed.
how Americans flatly refuse to accept the blindingly obvious (and what every government in the world apart from the USA knows) that human-made greenhouse gasses are to blame for global warming.
_ energy_grid) for Carbon emissions per citizen per year in metric tons:
I suppose its hardly surprising when you realise that US citizens per capita are the higest polluters in the world, and the president is totally owned by the oil corporations.
Here's some figures (from http://www.geni.org/globalenergy/library/national
USA: 5.51
Finland: 2.8
Germany 2.7
UK: 2.5
Spain: 2.1
France: 1.83
Why is this not under politics.slashdot.org
Does anyone else find it too much of a coincidence that this happened while Bush was in office?
Before any liberals are tempted to mod up one of my comments, a word of warning: I'm actually making fun of you.
Global "warming" isn't going to just raise everyone's thermostat by 5'C. It's cranking up the chaotic fractal dimension of the atmosphere. Some places will get colder. Like when the Greenland ice melts, flushing fresh water into the North Atlantic, it will push the "Thermo Haline Circulation" farther south, making the warm Gulf Stream flow more directly from America to, say, France, instead of warming the Baltic. The UK will plunge into an arctic climate like northern Scandanavia, along with the rest of northern Europe. Other places are likely to also freeze or drop, though the average will be higher, meaning some places will become hellishly hot. And the kinds of storms we'll see in the ongoing transition will make hurricanes look like mist.
--
make install -not war
In Phoenix we've had record cold so far this year, and rain out the wazoo. The mountains are actually turning green. GREEN. Maybe it's warmer somewhere else, but not here.
Having just arrived in the Pacific Northwest this year, I was disappointed when the Cascade Mountains received little to no snow and my wife and I couldn't go skiing. At least I didn't buy a season pass like many did. How unfortunately for them.
Someone modded your post as "overrated" - beware censorship. How sad is it to mis-use your mod point to stifle opposing points of view?
let's look at your beloved athens and how they REALLY were: had slaves who had zero or little rights, worked for free and were pretty much used for everything as very cheap labor women werent allowed to vote; only the men were let's now look at USA: had slaves who had zero or little rights, worked for free and were pretty much used for everything as very cheap labor women werent allowed to vote untill 1930s; only the WHITE men were; the minorities werent allowed to vote either so yes Athens and USA are "democracy"!
These guys are a little off the mark. Global warming is a combination of very-long-term weather cycles and the earth slowly dying.
"First fact to consider is just one lone volcano in an eruptive phase releases more of these toxic gases in a single day then mankind has in its species existence"
The problem is that there are more volcanic eruptions. Volcanic activity is increasing very fast and is a major symptom of the planets approaching death.
Maybe they should fast track the terra-forming of Mars.
sqribbles.blogspot.com/.
And the situation now?:
Hmm....Well if that is your benchmark how about Al Jazeera?
I would consider NOAA to be quite a bit more credible than NASA on matters of climate and weather.
Some so-called "statistician" had the gall to tell me that the odds in roulette are stacked in favor of the house! He mumbled some nonsense about "probability" which I was too stupid to comprehend and told me that while I "might have short-term, unpredictable changes in winnings, the long-term trend favored the house by several percent."
But I don't believe him anyway (we all know there are liars, damned liars, and statisticians). I asked him what number the ball would land on next, and he didn't know! He just gave me some lame "forecast" with a bunch of percentages. I may not understand this "probability," but I've been around the block a few times and know a quack when I see one.
How can he claim to predict what is likely to happen to my money in the long term if he can't even predict exactly what number the ball will land on next?!
Alright, croupier, I've got my kids' whole college fund to invest here, so let's start with a thousand on black! Wooo!
The scientists at NASA only had to call up the folks at Princeton, since we all now know that random number generators can predict the future. You heard it here first.
Slashdot: Conspiracy for Nerds, Stuff that Matters
At least the war on the environment is going well
[note: the following is only partly satirical turnabout on the parent]
I find non Americans to be, on balance, very intelligent and well-informed. They tend to hold views similar to those of intelligent, well-informed Americans, with two exceptions.
1) Gun control. Most non Americans labor under the idea that law abiding people are not to be trusted (criminals by definition being heedless of the law). They care nothing for the natural right of self defense.
2) Global warming. Nearly all non Americans accept tenuous theory on this subject without applying any critical judgement. It seems to be a matter of guilt, self hate, and angst.
It just has to be the humans, doesn't it!?
One thing I hate about this is how much they (anyone waving this flag) ignore (intentionally) external influences on earth. Look at this quote:
Remember the Little Ice Age. Why did it happen? Lower solar output. Today, higher solar output. Hmmm, notice any corralation?
I'm not ignoring the fact that we could be influencing the global climate, but what we are doing might only be 0.1% compared to external inputs to the system.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
Not funny. Also not insightful. As a matter of fact, I am going to abuse my last mod point to hit you with an "Overrated."
Enjoy!
That's just typical. It takes the arrogance of some NASA rocket scientist to proclaim world shaking doomsday scenarios based on a single transitory fluctuation like 30 years of data. President Bush says we don't know enough to be able to make predictions about the changing climate one way or the other. And who are you going to believe? A man who told us that 'God talks through him' or some ivory-tower egghead who studies weather satellite data all day?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Since El Nino affects only the tropical Pacific regions, will the regions other than these be affected too? Is there an inter connection between the ElNino and other ocean currents?
An interesting question is how the emissions break down, and especially why particular countries differ from each other.
Like (examples, just guessing) perhaps the US number is greatly increased by the heavy use of cars, Finland's number is increased by heating, France is fairly low due to significant use of nuclear power etc.etc.
They never get that cold.
The effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases on the retention of solar radiation is at least as well understood, probably better. In other words even if we assume that sunspots are having an effect, it does not necessarily follow that humans are therefore NOT having an effect. All logically plausible causes for increasing global temperatures can co-exist, creating a cumulative effect.
The discussion of global climate change and it's causeS (note the s) includes thorough consideration of processes, not just an eye on the global thermometer and a desperate cast-about for a cause to pin it on.
Even if there were no change in global temperature we would be concerned, just based on our understanding of the processes involved. I've never had an elephant dropped on me, but if I saw one being raised over my head I would be concerned anyway, just from my understanding of the processes of gravity, physics, and human biology.
Are you saying that every place but the United States has dropped politics as a function of science, subset ecology? Which place is that? Where is this "other place" that has no politics associated with science/ecology? Name it if you can.
I don't see it, albeit just looking on the web. It appears to be a universal phenomenon that science/money/politics has always been an intertwined mega endeavor, looking back in history, looking at todays events, and then extrapolating, i don'tthink politics is being removed from ecology any time soon. Anyplace.
I don't think you even could separate it, humans being human.
Cultural jingoism sometimes makes random selected human/tribe/nation think their "way" is perfect, yet from another's viewpoint it isn't. The old expression that fits is "you can't see the forest for the trees".
Here's the obvious example, even the assertion that other nation "x" has separated "science" from "politics" is a political assertion from just the way humans use language. Because once you make something an absolute, a statement, a declarative, you are implying that every possible variable has been accounted for, and there are no exceptions.
In some small matters,extremely small,say very basic maths, probably there is little to no debate,but once you get beyond the trivially obvious, I think you will find there's still debate, and hence politics will enter. In fact I'd say the "scientific" community is one of the more highly politicised communities, in all nations.If it's not, I'd like to see the nation that doesn't have any legislation in their written/coded laws that pertain to "ecology". If they have laws, then that's political, it hasn'tbeen separated, it's been politicised.
To get back to ecology, this is such a broad subject, and the modeling required to actually finalise some conclusions is so hugely complex, that I would think it's safe to say there will be debate and therefore poltics involved for quite some time to come. The reason why-perhaps- it might seem like the US has more, is merely from the fact that the US is very large in many diverse ways and the center of the worlds attention all the time in the news. The US currently controls and influences so very many things because of our actions it's just easier to look at and point at, that's all. Say for instance one day we decided to just end our political involvement with "science" and become totally insular. that would mandate our dropping of support for any other nations or exteernal treaties or collaborative effort in 'ecology". We could just 'declare" a carved in stone group think policy and say "debate has ended, this is so, it is scientific fact, and no other viewpoints are valid, our science has determined such and such and that's it".
That in itself would be a rad political move, yet it would fit the requirement of removing politics from the discussion-at least as regards any other nation, and they would be left to their own endeavors in their "perfectness".
Anyway, to get back to basics, I'd like to know by actual names which nation or group of nations have no politics associated with the loosely defined groupings of scientific explorations that might fall under an "ecology" heading.
Notice that Earth and Mars are different planets. Mars is 142 million miles away from the Sun whereas Earth is only 93 million miles away from the Sun. Consequently, the intensity of the light from the Sun on Mars compared to Earth is only 93^2/142^2 = 43.0 % That's a lot less light. less light => less energy That's why its a hell of a lot colder on Mars than it is on Earth. And that's why we would need to make Mars warmer for it to be habitable.
This year though, I was wearing shorts before January was out.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
Nice comparison. I love a great punch-line.
Well the overal climate is changing and like any other CHAOTIC system some local areas are moving in one direction and others in another. BFD. The 'issue' 's are are we the idiots causing it? what's realy hapening etc. etc. etc. We can't see the forest through the trees.
SUVs are not bad, they are the result of quite a lot of evolving engineering that has revolved around peoples needs and wants. You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second? I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you? I think anyone with a gram of brains should own some, and if they don't they are evil and stupid. Whoops, sounds elitist doesn't it? I advocate people do, but I wouldn't say they are evil and stupid if they don't. I'm still on a computer that most slashdotters would chunk in the rubbish, an old pp200, yet it fits my needs enough I don't have to junk it or pollute to get a larger/faster/ more energy hog one at this second. That will change obviously, but everyones needs are different, yes? So what is "evil"? what's stupid really? Is it because it's just different? Glass houses and stones.
People will naturally switch to practical alternatives once they are, to use the expression, "on the shelf' for purchase. Practical is the keyword there. Some of the hottest best selling vehicles in the US are the hybrids now, including SUV hybrids that are just now hitting the market. You look at what is hot at the car shows, look at what is being demanded at the dealers. I'll tell you if you haven't looked, Hybrids are hot, besides in small cars like the Prius, they are coming in the SUV design and pickups, and new design high mileage cleaner burning diesels are hot and coming on strong in the near future, as well as the increasing interest in such things as biodiesel. Those are the two really large trends now you can readily see with a little research.
We are such a physically large nation that mass public transportation is not near as practical as in other nations, so we use roads and private vehicles more, just the way it is and no amount of complaining is going to put light rail to everyones doorstep or back yard mr fusion reactors in everyones aprtament or home. The tech and money isn't there yet for that. Neither. Nor would it even be remotely practical, that's why it isn't being done, there's little demand for it, because it just plain wouldn't work. It would be a humongously impractical polluting expensive lame idea to try and put some sort of light rail everyplace that humans need to go to.
We have "cars" of various types. that is what suits our needs in the US presently as a universal general concept in transportation. Primarily this is what we use. Those few areas and niche markets that absolutely can be better served by light rail or walking, ARE being served with light rail and walking right now, daily millions commute on light rail, IF it serves their needs, and everyone has different needs. When I lived urban I frequently took the commuter train, except when it didn't serve my needs, then I drove the approriate vehicle, or occassionaly rented a large truck, say when moving.
It's just how we socially evolved, and those sorts of SUV styled vehicles are practical for a lot of people, millions and millions of people. SUVs caught on because they are just a latter version of the old "family station wagon",just with even better features, and more useful features. These got popular because they filled a "needs" niche so well, people (a lot of people, not all but a lot) needed a "universal" designed vehicle that could function to get dad to work (a commuter vehicle), haul the family to the beach(a very large car or van to fit all the family and their gear), bring home the lumber and bricks and bags of cement for the back yard weekend patio project (some sort of truck), and etc. You can buy three specifically designed vehicles for those purposes, or one vehicle that covers all the needed uses. If you don't believe it, go to any Home Depot on the weekend and look at the parking lots. You'll see huge numbers of SUVs packed with stuff that would normally
First, let's look at the article that CNN stole their story from.
Notice the end of the article, where it says: "But compared to the previous five years, the United States as a whole was quite cool, particularly during the summer."
This is not what you might expect from your presented data...
[tongue in cheek] This is obviously due to Bush and his stepping away from the Kyoto accords and environmentalism. So, it seems that the US is cooling off due to the amount of carbon emissions, which weren't shown in your direct link, from it's citizens. Yay for the USA! [/tongue in cheek]
If you made 32k per year and put the 12% of your earnings in the stock market instead of social security, you would retire a millionaire and get 100k per year in retirement. Instead, it goes into fund the goverment debt making little money. The reality is that the government is living off the backs of retirees. Sure, it's going to cause problems when you take it away.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I think one key indicator that may wake people up will be the upcoming hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico. The last two years were exceptionally bad. If for a third time, we have more major hurricanes, it's going to be hard for the mainstream with their heads buried in the sand to ignore, especially those in Texas, Florida and other red states on the Gulf.
When you hear the US talking about a "war on [fill-in-the-blank]", you have to realize that the main philosphic drivers of the attitude are a belief that a zero-sum game is in play. The US has excelled, in the private sphere, at pareto-optimal games, but politically, has never gotten the hint.
I forget what 8 was for.
Can you imagine how America will respond when a tsunami wipes out a quarter of a million Americans? - don't worry I'll do my bit, I'll try my best to find that telephone number to warn them.. now where did I put it...
The little year that could.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Human's are a virus? then get some Antibiotics
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
All industrialized countries need to start taking the money they (waste) on the military budgets and divert this money into massive manhattan project development for alternative technologies to replace the wastefull technologies we now have, we need cheap self-growing solar cells, super eficient cars, computers, buildings etc. We need to use nanotech to rebuild the enviroment (forest echosystems etc), put gardens on all the flat roofed buildings we have etc. We need to do this to make an enxample to all those countries that want to emulate the behaviour of past superpowers that got us into this mess (think WW1,ww2, korea, vietnam, etc), the method of conducting policy by war is okay if your enviroment is not yet trashed, but when the enviroment collapses and you don't have quick solutions, then the solution at that future time is war (that's when you use your military to kill the other guy for his resources that you need to survive because you had no forsight to head off the comming disaster by developing good nanotech to sove your problems). We have the capacity to save the planet now, but if we don't do anything then chaos will rule and a new dark age will happen and we won't be able to recover by going through another future industrial revolution because all the raw materials we will need will be used up allready.
Interestingly enough, we probably don't have to do all that much to stop our rush to ecopocalypse. Manhattan itself could capture the solar energy that actually falls on all its rooftops, at the 20% efficiency we've now got, to completely supply all its electric demand - and have the same amount as that to sell to all the surrounding smaller cities which didn't convert. The recent dire warming projections reported last week in England show that dropping CO2 production below Greenhouse-building levels would cost something like 1% of industrial output, or delay the projected quintupling of "wealth creation" over the next hundred years by about 3 or 4 years.
This choice is especially interesting, because those alternatives would both skip the wars we've got now, and stop the eco destruction. It's interesting because the wars are generally to produce more pollution, both in perpetuating the petro economy for which the wars are fought, and in the destruction of the wars themselves, with their vast polluting industrial infrastructure, their wasteful fuel consumption on a grand scale, the pollution produced by destroying cities, especially those which include oil refineries, and the pollution from the vast artillery unleashed. Just switching to sustainable energy will save our species in innumberable ways.
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make install -not war
I was planing on moving to Phoenix to finally get out of cold ass michigan but I dont like the idea of the warmest summer in AZ this year
...to dictate/mandate by law/ what all peoples needs are, but be prepared for a pretty nasty rejection of that effort. Just because your needs a met with vehicle A, doesn't mean other folks needs are met with vehicle A, they prefer B, based on THEIR ideas of what is important to them or not.
That is a very slippery slope to go on once you start deciding for other people what their needs and wants are. You complain about people using a Hummer, swell, bet ya a quarter I could come to your house and see quite a few things you are personally doing that don't need to be done and cause pollution and for which alternatives exist, but guarantee you you wouldn't like being forced into changing by law.
Don't go there friend, don't advocate it on others, your way is the way of fascism, however well intentioned it might be. We are all individuals, we aren't clones yet.
I'm a big alternative energy enthusiast and advocate, as well as a long time environmentalist, but I will NEVER advocate throwing out our freedom baby with the bathwater of this years version of being politically correct. Never, not going to happen. You have a prius because there was enough interest in it to make someone build them and sell them, that's how it should be. You got to pick and choose a vehicle that suits YOUR needs. YOUR needs. It just might noit suit someone elses. I looked at the prius, it wouldn't serve mine as I would need something that could haul more weight and large articles. I would rather have one of the newer hybrid pickups coming on the market that also have a built in household voltage plug option to use the vehicle as a standby generator. See? Suits my needs much better, although the prius would get better mileage. If I had to choose, and my only options were a hummer or a prius I would have to choose the hummer, as it would suit more needs and wants, whereas with you it wouldn't. But I think it's GREAT it suits your needs and wants, and I heartily like to see modern engineering improvem4nts, to give folks CHOICE. See the difference yet? Don't try to take that human option away from others, don't even advocate it, that's a dangerous slippery slope to be on, IMO. Where would you like to stop? Mandate x-square feet per person in any residence as a maximum, make illegal anything else? How about clothes, you may only have two sets of clothes, style and design and color mandated by someone else. How about food, the calorie inspector comes by once a month and takes measurements and weighs you, determines what your proper diet is, and you have to fgollow that or it's illegal? Absurd, sure it is, just as absurd as mandating what people want for a ride or how to build their house or what they should wear for clothes or what music to listen to or....
Nope, we don't need to go down that authoritarian road any more than we have already. If you want to advocate like this "please consider getting an alternative vehicle, if you need a large one look into xyz model because..." and do it that way, it certainly comes across better. Just picking something out and telling that person they are evil because they aren't exactly like you with their choices is kinda bogus. And doing it by law is dangerous.
I know you were joking, but just a technical nitpick: antibiotics don't do anything to viruses, antibiotics are only effective against bacteria.
You're not serious that you don't "GET IT" are you? The evidence is overwhelming. And those who trot out some trumped up fiction that refutes the majority are mostly politcally motivated, or funded by oil companies. There is really buig bucks at stake to these people, at least for them. But if the planet compromises it's long term future, what have we done? Look at this month's "Discover" magazine; or any simple searching dregs up tons.: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2001/04/13/MN211246.DTL
http://home.earthlink.net/~cevent/11-10-04_solid_e vidence_gw.html
http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teaching/climatec hange/globemail4.11.97.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/02/19/en vironment.report/
http://www.ehleringer.net/Biology_5460/Projects/cl imatedata/globalwarming3.pdf
http://www.climatesolutions.org/pubs/pdfs/gwih.pdf
http://www.climateark.org/articles/2001/2nd/statto ce.htm
http://www.mmmfiles.com/archive/gw2001.htm
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/3970 _ConferenceBoard.pdf
http://www.colorado.edu/pwr/occasions/salliebaliun as.htm
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-1/p13.html
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Planting carefully selected tree crops and supporting undercroft also reduces evapouration (and topsoil) losses due to wind, and alters the local microclimate to be more rain-friendly. The soil under rainforests generally sucks, being of limited fertility and stability. It's the forest itself which attracts the rain and holds the soild together. On top of this, the trees actually collect considerably more water from dew and fog than lands as rain.
The answer is not to turn into tree-hugging hippies, because they're generally as thick as two short planks and highly destructive in their own way - but to go on being blindly industrial, producing hopelessly inefficient meat crops and hopelessly destructive, vulnerable and chemical-dependent massive monocultures, is just suicidal.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...where it goes over 120degF every summer. The kangaroos don't seem to mind much.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Russ' biggest blooper is that he distinguishes by racial, not cultural grouping.
Here in Australia there's a massive "Aboriginal Industry" which consists of two classes of people: greedy men happy to walk on the backs of others, and the lazy men that the first group "farms" for money, power and perks.
It's a cultural thing. Most of the above are half-castes, some of whom are whiter than I (mostly Pommie descent, big chunk of Austrian, smattering of other things), but there are many full-bloods in it too. But not all Aboriginals have fallen prey to this (I believe) handout-induced turpor. I know both half-castes and full-bloods who live and think like "proper" Aboriginals and others who are culturally indistinguishable from me.
There is indeed a problem, and it has nothing to do with race.
That the problem is recognised within the races in question is indisputable. The TIs (Torres-strait Islanders) call their problem children "coconuts" because they're only dark on the outside, and the mainlanders use the term "rainbows" because they're not sure what colour to be.
But yes, having someone that simplistic in OSI, and unwilling to recant, is a bit of a worry.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...but generally not for more than about 2 or 3 hours.
Melbourne is definitely female.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You know you won a fight on Slashdot when you don't get a response, just a new freak. My new freak writes just like the parent AC, e.g. very few question marks in his posts. :)
You should do what I do, keep a grudge and wait a while before adding a foe. You give away details about yourself when you add foes too quickly.
And what's wrong with question marks anyway? Aren't they teaching proper punctuation to you libertarian geeks down there in Alabama?
I just read the committee's report on the book and the author's response. There is no evidence that the author committed fraud (i.e., intentionally falsified data)--the committee says so. What he did do is advance a controversial thesis based on sloppy data collection. That warrants a harsh response in a professional journal, no more. Instead, the guy got torn apart by the gun lobby, who got people like you to believe that he committed fraud.
Whether his theory is true, we will never know, because no other historian is going to spend any amount of time collecting the data again, only to risk his job and reputation when publishing the results.
Hmm, warmest year in roughly 200 years... Not counting the previous 5 billion years. I wonder what that means?
...but not the politics.
Dubya's economic policies are generally money-driven and old-boy-network-driven rather than theology driven, but the mutant version of Creationism used by some of those old boys is terrifying to both Materialist/Evolutionists and what you might call bona fide Creationists as well.
The basic approach is to ignore the reams and reams of Biblical instruction about responsibility and us being judged on what we've done with this world - and after tossing that over their mental shoulder, reason as follows: "Since Jesus is going to destroy the Earth by fire and renew it when He returns, it doesn't matter what we do with it in the mean time". They just don't "get it" at all.
Unfortunately, the politics of his opposition are just as dumb and scary in different ways, and also for religious reasons. Abortion is a classic. If you can follow the reasoning that makes murder legal as long as it's in utero, you'll get a feel for it.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...US schools are effectively mandated to teach a theory believed to be entirely true only by a minority of the population, and they are so mandated for religious reasons - specifically, they are mandated in support of Materialism.
At least after mandating ID as an alternative teachers (and so by extension students) will have a choice of religious mandates to select amongst.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Do you have any way of Correlating manufactured good per carbon emmisions.
Last I checked we had a bit larger Industial base than Finland.
Though our production of lutefisk was signifigantly lower.
Okay, so consider weather to be a big RNG, why don't we do what the global conscioussness project does, and have a seansce to control our weather?
Philosophistry
A warmer CLIMATE will mean more extreme variations in WEATHER, the faster the rate of climate change (up or down) the more extreme the weather variations will be (ie: Boil a pot of water in a very short time and it will appear to explode). As some other posts have noted the weather here (in Victoria) has also been bizzare in the last few weeks. A full 25% of our annual rainfall in one day plus our coldest Feb day ever in the same year is kind of extreme.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Nice to see NASA go the political rather than the scientic way.
Maybe they are hoping to cash in on the political well founded and scientifically less so global warming hypothesis.
...do people need reminding that CLIMATE != WEATHER.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Great link. There's another excellent article on the page, called The Skeptics vs. the Ozone Hole which is very interesting as they detailed the various techniques used by the industry and media to refute Rowland and Molina's 1974 theory about the ozone layer, apparently these same techniques are used to refute the science behind global warming. Some great excerts from the court documents, including some current figures such as Tom Delay and his thoughts on science and peer-reviewed papers.
I'll assume you are the standard product of the U.S. Education system, unknowledgeable about science, naive and otherwise basically ignorant. I highely suggest you read the following article about the ozone layer. Rowland and Molina wrote their paper in '74, many industry and media skeptics used arguments such as yours, without regard, or in fact actual disdain, towards science, to try and refute their theory.
As an aside, that is why your pitiful country is falling by the wayside, an also ran, as Asia and Europe move to the future, those with their heads in the sand get left behind.
really..that the best you can do? They gonna take away your troll apprentice badge for that feeble attempt. So, uh...dude....mr anonymous coward, I drive various pieces of heavy equipment for a living. I terraform, dig it? I got chunks of machinery around here could *squish totally flat* one of those tiny trucks you are creaming over. OK, cool, they are nice as far as city boy trucks go, but that's about it. Those are near the size of the *smallest* truck around here. You need to try again on the insults. I don't play video games, I drive real things made out of steel that burn lotsa diesel and that weigh beaucoup multiple tons and I shoot real guns of the large caliber for sport, not imaginary space blasters in some jackoff kids computer game. Grow up and at least get a handle to post on slashdot or get a clue who you are posting to. If you think I am a yuppie, man, the expression is "wow, you must be new here".
Besides that, nice troll for an amateur, thanks for playing and no I don't mind responding even if it was a troll. All the points I made are still valid.
Oh No. The Climate is changing. Just like it always has and always will. The sky is falling, the sky. BTW, shouldn't NASA be working on rockets instead of meteorology. If they have fucking climatologists on the payroll that money came out of improving orbiters. Sure, share any usefull data, but leave the analysis to others and build space hardware NASA.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
Has this guy heard of the Sahara??
*Cha-ching!*
self-reliant
Stolen almost everything from the native americans....
distrust central authority
We call it "wild west manners" - and it isn't a compliment.
make use of available resources
Destroyed tall grass and buffalos in the process....
Manhattan itself could capture the solar energy that actually falls on all its rooftops, at the 20% efficiency we've now got, to completely supply all its electric demand - and have the same amount as that to sell to all the surrounding smaller cities which didn't convert.
There is the question of the pollution created by making the solar cells, though.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for making an effort, but something needs to give.. it's not just a case of "Oh, we can make [item x] to prevent that..." making something generates waste, and if that waste is excessive, organic or not, no good will come of it.
It is good to have guns, because it is good for the government to be scared of the people. POINT
COUNTER-POINT: it doesn't require the entire populace to be armed to change the nation. If the president does something that just one person doesn't like, all it takes is a single man with a rifle - just ask Jackie Kennedy.
The point is that if some of the nation are armed and not thoroughly regulated, then the entire nation needs to be armed as a countermeasure. This doesn't necessarily include the army, either - they do what their superiors tell them to do, but they're ineffective against a hidden threat. If you doubt that, just take a quick look at what's happening in Iraq: the army doesn't seem to be cleaning up the insurgents there, does it?
Also, unless the people are paranoid, and are constantly armed, there will always be moments at which they are completely vulnerable. You might have a 50 calibre Desert Eagle in both hands and a P-90 slung over your shoulder 20 hours a day, but you've gotta sleep sometime.
(and in America, we often wonder why the rest of the world doesn't get this)
Because guns aren't the solution to everything, and neither are their application. We see this attitude, and wonder how some of you deal with your computers - do you shoot them when they crash? Do you shoot at Bill Gates?
You don't see our left wing, because their alignment with you makes them invisible.
To be fair, the liberal left wing in the U.S. is far on the right of the right wing of many countries... we don't see it, but not because some of us are left. We don't see it because we only get fed the hyperbole coming out of the US - our media plays only what it is given. It's somewhat ironic that most of what we see, especially down here in the Southern Hemisphere, is the very stuff that alienates you from a lot of us.
I live in Venice. In recent years we have seen the "acqua alta" (flooding due to unusually high tides) phenomenon becoming more and more frequent. While my house has been flooded only twice since 2000, it is obvious that when we get to a point where 90% of the city is flooded more than 30 days a year, it becomes impossible to carry on normal activities that make a city "alive" as opposed to "pictoresque ruins".
We had a strong subsidence effect in past years, but it stopped when we (actually, some criminal industries) stopped pumping water out of the ground. Contrary to a common misconception, Venice is not "sinking": it's the sea that is rising.
The problem is very real and frighteningly fast for us. Just moving elsewhere is not a solution I would welcome, as I know this place is really unique. Not the same as moving from average Minnesota small town to average Kansas small town (both nice places, I'm sure, but you get my point about uniqueness).
You can find some data about past trends of flooding here.
Nuffsaid
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
It's true: we have to consider the total energy budget of any alternative, compared with our current consumption. I haven't been able to find the cost (in joules) of manufacturing & distributing today's solar cells. Have you got the data?
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make install -not war
yes its an interesting question, but the point remains that no matter what the excuse is, each US citizen is producing WAY more cabon than anyone else, WHICH HAS TO BE STOPPED, regardless of exactly why they do it.
"As Richard Eckard, the science leader with the project at the Department of Primary Industries in Gippsland's Ellinbank explains, 95 per cent of the methane produced by a cow comes from breathing and burping. " "Each cow produced about 130 kilograms of methane a year, he said, helping the agriculture industry contribute one-fifth of the greenhouse gases emitted by Australia - equal to the entire transport sector. " http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/19/10979 51695871.html?oneclick=true
As well there are 1.5 billion cows in the world (Nature oct 04) - so 1.5 billion times 130 kilograms per cow = 195,000,000,000 kilograms of methane ("green house gases") each and every year!
Do these experts tell us to kill all the cows? Or to stop barbecueing steaks? Or to stop eating burgers? Or to stop drinking milk? ...Eating icecream?
It's all about university tenure and research money to hire TA's.
Here is another analysis, and a comparison with a pro-gun academic who fabricated data...
Quote from the article:
""There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, based in New York."
Since NASa obviously believes there is a link between recently warming trends and greenhouse gas emissions, can we expect to see less postings about how "the earth is always going through warming and cooling treands that expand over 1000s of years so these scientists don't know wtf they are talking about"?
And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
One could also argue that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from todays academic orthodoxy is a reflection of another long-standing tradition in America (and other countries, too, BTW) of anti-intellectualism.
In fact, if you look closely at recent culture in three of the greatest superpowers: America, Russia and China you can see threads of this same movement, in some cases actually used by the government as a propaganda ploy.
In China, cf The Cultural Revolution.
In Russia, consider the crackdown on the intelligentsia and, now, on independent media.
In America, corporate media is inundated with right-wing pundits putting on a show of ridiculing and reviling intellectuals in academia and the "liberal media elite". The "elite" woudl be "them" while "we" are "folks with common sense".
Academics have come out with many propositions and some of them are silly; but the debate and the discourse has degenerated away from logic into some kind of entertaining spectacle designed to draw in listeners and viewers just as much as "professional" wrestling.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Elrond has an '80s hairstyle and wears a little tiara. "Straight" doesn't enter into the equation. ;)
"Nations like France fought long and hard for democracy..."
Yeah, and France did such a bang-up job defending it half a century ago.
Atheist and damn proud. Religion is dangerous. That's how wars get started.
That said, in the words of Johnny Storm, "Flame on!"
I think, on the whole, we do see eye-to-eye, but I wanted to make a couple of comments.
You used this analogy:
You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second?
I wanted to point out the hole in that analogy. I use a Via C3 processor in my workstation at home. It uses 1/2 the energy of a '486DX4, and exhibits 9 times the clock cycles, and about 4 times the computational power per clock cycle, thus making it a more efficient device. It is not as fast as a Pentium 4, I grant, but a Pentium 4 is much more computer than I require, and probably more computer than most of us require.
Cars fall into this idea also. If you can make an SUV get 40MPG, then you should be able to get a sedan to go up to 70+.... and that is how the technology would (in my opinion) be better applied in most cases.
I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you?
I congratulate you on achieving what I am currently striving to achieve. Remember, though, that every dollar spent on efficiency saves about three on RE generation hardware.
Back to SUVs, we have half a year of inclement winter weather in the US,people still need to get from point A to B, so in a lot of places all wheel drive is practical, at least having the option. Many europaen cars have that as an option as well, because it works for that purpose. And in other places where you need to drive might be on still not the best of roads, again, 4wd is practical for those situations. This is why SUVs are just so popular, they fill a niche that so many millions have. If it didn't, we wouldn't see them out there in such numbers.
This is an excellent point, because I live in an area that does get lots of snow. AWD is a wonderful thing. Counterintuitively, though, a well-built AWD sedan (Such as Subaru's offerings) will work better in snowy, slippery conditions than an SUV, due to lower mass (reduces inertia, making steering and braking easier and requiring less torque to start up), and a lower center of gravity improving the stability of the vehicle. The only SUV I can think of to have that kind of stability is a Hummer, which gets it from its wide gait, rather than a low center of gravity.
www.wavefront-av.com
The classic example of US citizens bearing arms against their government was Waco. Needless to say, despite various people's interpretation of the consitution, the government won.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Kangaroos jump. You'd be better off with the reindeer.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
...in that they are both downward bound. Natural selection can weed out the losers, and mutation can produce more losers, by degrees or in lumps, but there's no mechanism for producing winners.
None.
Destructive mutations accrue much faster than anything which could be considered helpful overall. The inevitable result is ever-increasing basic illness and incapacity, which will eventually overcome hygeine advances and even miracle drugs and lead to extinction for all, not to new and fitter species.
That's science - or more specifically, that's the path which observation points us down, as opposed to the glories of esoteric thought experiments labelled "science".
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing