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Rewriting Environmental Science
Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."
Is that better than eminent?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
When the Polynesians found Easter Island, they found a paradise. Seas teeming with porpoises, huge edible palm trees, bountiful flightless birds and tillable soil from coast to coast.
Unfortunately, they also brought rats with them on their canoes.
The rats ate the birds and bird eggs. The trees were cut down for timber and kindling. The land was farmed to exhaustion. And the entire civilization that arose there quickly collapsed under its own weight.
The whole time, people thought things would last forever, but they couldn't see the end coming.
We have our rats too.
until this story doesn't exist
I recently spoke with an important public health official who told me it is his job to argue for science. Now I'm not sure of his political views and he may love the Bush administration for all I know, I found that interesting and think it applies a lot to what's going on right now with NASA.
That recent Bush appointee that tried to go against the Big Bang theory is just the sort of problem, as is recent funding cuts to NASA. I don''t just blame the current administration however--because it is the scientist's job to convince the public and politicians of the importance of their work, and it is clear that they are currently largely failing at this.
It belongs in both.
Why is this under a "more-reasons-to-privitize" department? I'm all for private ventures going into space, but you're quite delusional if you expect there to be any large scale investment in global warming research by the private sector. Yes, I know there might be some exceptions, but privitization is not going to give us better research.
Better rockets, cheaper missions, maybe... but, in general, this sort of basic scientific research is *exactly* the sort of thing the government should be doing. Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...
Elrond, Duke of URL
"This is the most fun I've had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"-Sam&Max
Not to sound like an ass, but I find this post a tad ironic... especially when the article linked above is talking about the problems of filtering science though politics.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
ExxonMobile and its supporters in Washington state, " The earth belongs to man; he can wreck the earth in any way that he sees fit ".
Before 2050, we will know which bit of wisdom is the right wisdom. By 2030, we will have burned up all easily retrieved oil. Significant portions of Artic and Antartic ice shelves will have melted away.
Unless we do something now to create carbon-neutral energy processes and to achieve zero-population growth, we -- rich and poor alike -- will face a miserable future of unstoppable climatic catastrophes.
Son, we live in a world that has myths, and those myths have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, PrinceAshitaka? The President has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Big Bang Theory, and you curse the Baptists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the Theory's subversion, while tragic, probably saved souls. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves souls. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall. We use words like God, Intelligent, Design. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very mythology that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Bible, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
The politicization of science is an important issue for science. Why don't you think this is a science story?
It belongs to the science-dissection-by-politics section.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
This all falls within what I would term as "scientific morality" and while that term has some scary images, the lack of a well laid out definition to scientists and the public could lead to disaster. Consider current trends in science showing : (a) Political control over science and publication of findings.b) Skewed guidelines involving the morality of scientists and science.(c) Lack of backbone in scientists in general to speak up in countries that are technically "free", many times just due to regard for a steady income, and intimated threats. In other words; what are the scientist's responsibilities to society ?(d) The potential for experiments to be conducted in Dangerous areas of research that could end up destroying humanity. (this would have been laughed at before the atom bomb)Included but not limited within this last category would be such things as; Artificial Black Holes,Worm Holes, Vortex theory, Biological Warfare, Nuclear Weapons; (bigger and better), Nano Gray Goo, Global Warming, on and on...Scientific Morality; could be simply defined somewhat as;Having enough wisdom not to destroy our world with knowledge that is beyond our mental ability to use.Responsibility to use said knowledge within certain guidelines, regardless of political influence.Here is a further link to other nightmare potentials of science; http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm Mystery
MYSTERY
I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to write off a geoshities site as a credible source of information (or as any source of information, for that matter).
I'm a hair over 20 years old and I've heard people bitch and moan about the end of the world, global warming, WW3, etc, since I was born. And frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of WW3 than global warming. While I'm all for alternative energy, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, and what not, all the bullshit from BOTH SIDES of the global warming argument have made me extremely cynical of wether or not it should be taken seriously.
Frankly (and I have absolutely no credentials to back up my opinion) I think the sea levels rising several meters of more in the next 20-30 years has about as much chance of occuring as Bush resigning from office so he can star in the next gay cowboy movie. Maybe if people would stop bitching about nuclear power and accept the fact it's 19233274928734 times better than burning shit loads of carbon compounds, the world would be a better place.
Quicktime
Or, you could actually -read- the article.
Specifically the parts that note he was permitted from discussing a number of things and he had to give the interview with a NASA watchdog recording and overseeing the interview.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
However we now live in an age when even this is being eroded and where the forces of politics, never the most rational of disciplines, feel safe in attempting to pervert its path. Will anyone really care? Will anyone notice? Scientific learning is looked down on. You are more likely to be admired in society for your knowledge of baseball scores than buckyballs.
I would suggest to our american colleagues that they look elsewhere for those that will value their work. The US isn't going to get better any time soon, whatever the shade of the next party in power. It's either that or organise your own political party and take control...
The Bush administration has made so many unsettling power consolidating moves since 2000 that a claim like this really isn't very suprising.
I highly recommend a documentary called "Why we fight"...
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. -Confucius
The links above don't work. Go here instead and click on the links.
...in TFA. He mentions in passing that the previous executive branch crew tried the same thing, but in an opposite manner, he was encouraged to overstate findings.
He's a member of the Illuminati, that's why!
m l
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/nwopopcontrol.sht
The other important, if not newsworthy, quote was
An organization with a culture like that might be right about something someday, but only by coincidence.The problem isn't because the politicians are rewriting the science.
It's because the scientists are rewriting the theology.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Careful taking this guy's point-of-view seriously.... if you don't want to take my word for it, read the smoke and mirrors his sig links to...
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?
... the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now; try 60 billion on for size. As for the how ... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen one way or another.
Environmentalists say that the best thing you can do for the earth, the best way to conserve resources, is to not have more than two children. In retrospect, this is obvious
Actually, if not for immigration, most of the first world would already be in population decline. When people get reasonably comfortable, and childhood mortality is negligible, children are deferred and one or two are sufficent for most to satisfy their need for procreation. We've got one and that was enough for us.
If you want to cut birthrates, it's not the men who are going to have to swallow.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
You mean it belongs alittle in both.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
if you haven't already, tag the story with "typo". One that I tagged actually had the typo stealth-fixed!
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
http://graphics.jsonline.com/graphics/news/img/jun 05/carlson_060905_big.jpg - only a slight exaggeration, this really happened
Not necessarily; Developed countries undergo population implosions.
Schools in Japan are shutting down in a wave, starting with the first grades, and then pushing onward through the school. Sometimes, they just shut down entire floors in their schools.
This is happening elsewhere, as well.
People are seriously freaked out about this.
The thing I find amusing, is that many environmentalists have problems with this.
In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
And that strategy is totally being played out.
So when you tell them, "Hey, in Japan, they're freaking out, because people aren't having kids, and it seems to be because they're developed," it tends to not go over so well.
But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley
:-)
Well, when the imminent scientist actually becomes a real scientist, maybe then people will start listening to him
While dire, the time frame isn't quite as bad as you imply. He is suggesting that if we continue as we are we run a high chance of crossing a tipping point in a decade. Slowing emissions will lengthen the time to the tipping point which will give us hopefully enough time to not just slow the rate of emissions but being to reverse the damage that has already been done up to that point.
So basically the worst thing we can do right now is nothing (as you point out 10 years isn't long at all).
I guess a heck of a lot is riding now on what the big countries do in the next couple years, China, US, etc. And start heading for high ground if you live on the coasts.
In Siberia, there is a forestry where the tress grows in pairs right next to each other.
While the common wisdom is that each individual trees need space around it to grow, the theory was that this was only true for capitalist trees. Rather than compete with each other for resources, socialist trees would cooperate for the common good.
Every official report from the forestry shows that the experiment was a great success.
With all due respect to James Hansen, the problem here is simple: just how many microseconds after scientists attempted to influence politics did you think it would take before politicians attempted to influence science?
We've seen it everywhere from the debate on Global Warming (where scientists have joined forces with ecologists to engage in massive social engineering in the form of the Kyoto accord) to the debate on evolutionary science (where fundamentalists attempted to redefine science with Intelligent Design) to the debate on gun control (where researchers have attempted to show a direct causal link between guns and crime) and pesticides (Alar, anyone?)
Now, whenever I see a news report on a political topic start quoting "scientists" or "researchers", I generally don't think "oh, good; a concerned scientist trying to weigh in on an important topic", but "whose special interest money is paying for this guy?"
It's hard to play in the mud and not get muddy yourself.
At first thought it might seem like the only way to limit the birthrate would be draconian or orwellian methods - nothing palatable to be sure. However, the truth is much simpler than that.
There is a long-observed direct corrolation between poverty and birth rate. Societies with greater poverty have higher birthrate. Even in China it's commom for city-dwellers to observe the 1-child rule, but poor farmers still have families of 6 or 7 simply because they need all the labor to help create an income. The same is true in the slums of Calcutta where children are needed to rifle through trash piles looking for recyclable goods. This happens across all the great poverty centers: Manilla, Bangkok, Mumbai, Calcutta, Nairobi, Cairo, etc.
Japan is a perfect example of the opposite. They have a NEGATIVE birthrate because the affluence of their society has led many to chose not to have children.
The solution to overpopulation will come hand-in-hand with our solution to many other injustices: great a fair distribution of resources and we'll be able to live sustainable on our planet.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
I fully agree that Washington politics on the environment sucks. But why bring Native Americans into this? Like pretty much all other societies, they caused extinctions, destroyed the environment, and didn't keep their population in check (at least not by choice).
Native American sayings are not a good guideline for modern policies. Tackling issues of sustainability will require science and technology.
In light of this and many other recent stories, I don't believe that we can believe ANY US government agencies any longer when it comes to scientific subjects.
If even the most eminent (or immanent?) scientists in a field can be censored in this way I need a whole new salt shaker (to take pinches from.)
I recall that the Soviets used to send off dissenters to spend a little holiday in the gulags. The White House seems more civilised about it, but they strive for the same effect.
How many trees would need to be planted so that if all other factors remain normal (population growth, green house gas emissions), our net CO2 emissions would start to decline ?
There are more then 10 million people in tokyo alone. You really think Japan can support the population it has now? Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.
Unfortunately they have painted themselves into a corner. The future of mankind is exactly like japan today. This pyramid scheme where the young work to finance the old is going to collapse sooner or later. We can hold if off for a while by opening up the floddgates and letting the dark people work to support us but even that's going to collapse sooner or later.
If japan is to run itself sustainably it probably needs to have something like four or five million people tops.
evil is as evil does
>> In the 1990's, a bunch of environmentalists got together, and said, "What do we need to do? We need to seriously do something, so that people will be more environmentalist." The strategy, they decided on, was to mythologize environmentalism. That is, to get people to worship the Earth Mother, to shun technology, to get in psychic harmony with nature, and so on, and so forth.
I am curious to hear your sources.
Let me spark a reality check for ya.
Emissions are never going down. By products of human activity is proportional to a modern quality of life that all human around the world strive for. America and the rest of Europe have achieved this. China, India, and Africa want this too. They are next in line, and will reap the fruits of their labor to the modern age of energy consumption.
Don't fight global warming, it's a losing battle. However, human can and will do what we do best...and that's adapt.
Life is not for the lazy.
Here in Holland, many times i see the same problem. Close to where i live, the government wants to build a highway to relieve congestion on a parallel highway. So they hired scientists to study the effects of the new road. It turned out the road would make things worse: instead of relieving the congestion on the other road, it would increase congestion on every other main road in the surroundings.
The scientists, knowing what would happen, leaked this result immediately to the press, but the final report got stowed away in a very deep drawer. Parliamant had a tough job to get the report out of this drawer again.
But. Then came the obligatory environmental impact study. In this study, the former report is completely ignored. The vast increase of congestion is not taken into account in an evironmental impact assessment!
If the politicians have it their way (and they must be quick, everyone knows they will get their asses kicked next elections) we'll have a road that increases the congestion, costs about a billion euro's of tax money and will terribly damage the environment and landscape. But the construction firms will be very happy.
Trust me, I work for the government.
The same four people also supported the thesis that the earth is round. This does not mean that the earth is flat. Just because evil people can see the obvious does not mean that the obvious isn't obvious. The earth has only so much stored energy; it receives only so much energy from the sun. The more people the energy has to be shared with, the less there is for each. The faster we use up the stored energy, the sooner we're forced back onto just the energy we get from the sun. That's just straightforward.
We cannot sustain our present rate of population increase; we probably cannot even sustain our present population indefinitly, once cheap energy runs out. This is obvious; so obvious that you don't need to be an evil genius to understand it.
What you may need to be an evil genius to do is to come up with a good solution, because this problem looks intractable in a free society.
There are indeed. Their names are Famine, Pestilence, Predation and Death. If we don't come up with a better solution, the Four Horsemen will be along shortly with one of their own.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Why would environmentalism be against technology and developing? Progression is not one-dimensional, you see. Almost all environmentalists i know, are really into technology and innovation. They like high-tech renewable energy-systems. Some develop lightweigt vehicles. You know what's the main reason for farmers to switch to organic farming? Theye're curious, they want to try something new. It's the conservative farmers and technicians that stick to unsustainable methods.
Environmentalists (even most from the dreadlock-type) want development and technology. They just want it to take another direction, a light-weight, energy-efficient and elegant route. They think one can have a high (or even higher) standard of living with much less environmental impact.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Population growth is most likely to reach a sustainable limit and level off for a LONG time until we find a way to move beyond the Earth. Most industrialized countries are experiencing population shrinkage (the US would be if it wasn't for immigration). As more and more countries approach a point of full industrialization their demographics will likely shift in much the same way everyone elses has. They will go from booming populations to slowly growing ones to ones that oscillate over long periods of time to reach a sustainable limit. I've heard that this limit is as low as 20 billion people. Birth rates in industrial nations do not much outpace death rates because wealthier better educated people simply do not (on average) have 8 kids.
Bungo!
I think you're leaving out a few factors, though... tradition and religion, for example.
/until/ they had the 5th or 6th child and had to pay for their education, etc.
If a society traditionally has large families, then it doesn't matter whether they live in poverty or health - they're likely keep that tradition.
As for religion - there's highly catholic families here who have 7-9 children. Not because they're poor - in fact, most of them lived in wealth
Of course these probably don't even begin to offset all the people who decide to have only 1 child or no children at all.
Okay, but isn't "natural" population control usually achieved through massive infant mortality rates? I wouldn't think animals would see a lack of resources and just stop having kids; humans sure as hell don't, anyway.
As for the how, there's a number of innocuous steps you could take right now. Education is an obvious first step. Then there's monetary incentives; perhaps we could remove the dependent tax credit after the second child, or at least decrease it. If it gets really bad, forced sterilization might be the answer (you're allowed two -- if you hit five or so, that's it, tubes tied). The key distinction, though, is that the laws apply to ALL citizens, not just the poor. It's really quite simple to make a program like that NOT discriminatory... just make the law apply to everyone, and make sure loopholes are very very difficult to come by. Hell, most well-off people end up with smaller families anyway, these days.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
What you may need to be an evil genius to do is to come up with a good solution, because this problem looks intractable in a free society.
Thus are born the seeds of Socialism...doing what's right for us regardless of the cost to us.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
Stalin, Hitler, Sanger, Blavatsky..
It's nice to see that Slashdot is still a centre of logic and rational debate...
http://outcampaign.org/
Surely, the U.S. has laws against this sort of thing, does it not? If the administration is doing the sort of thing that Hansen is alleging, it would be grounds for criminal indictment, wouldn't it? (Sorry, this is coming from a non-US citizen here.)
http://outcampaign.org/
Are you gonna ask us next to "Open the curtains and admire God's beautiful word, and know that even global warming happens for a reason"? Where to they teach you to talk like this? In some Texaco-city, "Cowboy wanna pump-pump"-bar, or is this Sunday and your last glass at communion? Sell christian somewhere else, we're all stocked-up here! (Noise of Heaven's gates loudly slamming shut follows) ...
I personally, would be dead, but I imagine there would be a bit less population on the planet right now over all..
(and it would suck)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
He actually meant immanent scientist. This guy is everywhere!
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510042
When analyzing the mean-year trend of the Earth's surface temperature for the past 140 years one can discern two sections of monotone linear increase of temperature during two last industrial centuries. The first one begins somewhere in the period 1906-1909. The previous segment demonstrates a weak decrease in the temperature trend, not increase. For explanation of this sudden break we look for a phenomenon of cosmic scale during this time which could have given rise to beginning of global warming with a significant probability. On the 30th June 1908 Tungus meteorite exploded with the power of ~15 Mt TNT at an altitude of ~10 km. Such an explosion could cause considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure in mesosphere. The difference between this mesosphere catastrophe and atmospheric nuclear tests that cause another break in the temperature plot is discussed. The purpose of this report is to open the debate and to encourage discussion among scientists.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I thought "V" was for "Vendetta."
I disagree. If humankind is anihilated then the emmisions will go down. There are many in the scientific community holding the opinion that humankind will be (effectively) wiped out in the next 250 years. For those of you that think that is a long time - I can see, as I type, a tree that started growing more than more than twice that span of time ago. Two hundred and fifty years is more than the lifetime of an individual man - but is a very short time indeed compared with history - and with our future history. Let's adapt now by trying to cut those emmissions - and control the population growth.
Ian D. K. Kelly
idkk Consultancy Ltd.
"Quality through Thought"
the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now
I keep seeing this rubbish pop up, and I keep knocking it down. Repeat after me, the earth is not overpopulated. You could quite comfortably fit the entire population of the planet in the state of texas with a house and a small garden each. Thats one per man woman and child. Move it to family units and you have a nice big house and a decent bit of land. There is a global food surplus, and its massive, I recall back in the 90s there was a lot of talk about the "bread mountains and wine lakes" of the EU. The problem has always been distribution, and the half cocked dictators and fucked up factions messing with it.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
I gave the conventional story. If it is proved untrue by these scientists and that not only did the aboriginal populations of Easter die off due to solely to European diseases, but also that the complete deforestation of the island and subsequent erosion and nutrient leaching of the soil occurred at the hands of unknown Europeans who inhabited the island some time between the first white sailors arriving in the 1500s and subsequently leaving without a trace before Cook showed up in the early 1700s. Then that theory will become the conventional scientific explanation.
I'll stick with the more plausible account which follows a much straighter arc than the latest theory. For now.
It is sad that the USA had become one of the more repressive cultures of the world. Goodbye, Liberty!
Ian D. K. Kelly
idkk Consultancy Ltd.
"Quality through Thought"
You are either playing ignorant to get your point in the door, or you are seriously out of touch with the environmentalist community. Or, you are in touch with the environmentalist community, but are seeking to wash it's past out, or claim it's name in service of your ideals, and make it more acceptable to the general public.
Regardless, I find the method of communication irritating right now.
And regardless, I will answer your question: Many environmentalists are against technology because it very regularly leads to unsustainable development practices (such as reliance on oil) and environmental catastrophy (Global Warming, nuclear fallout, clearcutting, soil depletion...) Many environmentalists also oppose it, because they find the technology alienating. Very few people define themselves as just environmentalists; There are usually a collection of concerns that group themselves together.
I have pro-technology environmentalist friends, I also have anti-technology or pro-split technology environmentalist friends. (Separate the "bad" technology from the "appropriate" technology.) I spend time at communes, visit ecovillages, and do all sorts of different trippy things with weird people. Have you? The key word (or banner,) (which you repeated yourself,) is "sustainable," and a bunch of these environmentalists just plain don't believe in technology. They don't see the infrastructure behind manufacturing chips as a sustainable process. Some do. Regardless, most believe in, or at least support, the mythologizing of nature. (I do myself! But for different reasons. I believe in mythologizing everything.)
Here's an experiment to try:
Go visit your local eco village. Start talking about technology, start talking about genetic manipulation, start talking about virtual reality, start talking about pervasive computing, and start talking about the technological singularity. See how far you can get, before people start getting worried or strained looks on their faces. Report back on your experiment here.
no, NASA is not a branch of the USAF.
This space available.
I find it funny how many stories are coming out of the same NASA lab about how they are constantly being censored, and aren't allowed to talk to anyone. OK, then how do these stories keep coming out?
I have no doubt that the Bush administration has manipulated information coming out of the lab for their own political benefit, since that is what politicians do. What gets me, is how many high-profile stories I keep seeing about how these people aren't allowed to do interviews. I mean, logic would say that if they aren't allowed to voice their opinion, then they wouldn't be on TV voicing their opinion.The definition of censorship has obviously been softened a lot recently, when you can go on TV and talk about how you are being censored, and what is being censored. I mean, I have been reading articles about how these people aren't allowed to say anything, pretty much since Bush got into office, yet they still seem to have websites up, and go to conferences, and make all sorts of press statements. It is certainly an insidious form of censorship.
I'm not even sure how you tell if someone is being censored any more. In the old days, you could tell because they weren't allowed to say anything. These days I guess you just have watch them on network TV so they can tell you how badly their free speech is being trampled.
Hmm, what's next, people launching $100,000,000 ad campaigns to let us know they don't have any money?
Yeah - if he wants to be free to speak candidly about global warming, he should become a climate scientist in the private sector - like for Exxon-Mobil or somebody.
This space available.
Science and politics don't get on well.
The problem is that politics tries to categorise things into good and bad {and, sometimes, indifferent} whereas pure science does not make such distinctions. Pure scientific phenomena are neither good nor bad; they just are.
For instance, there exists a very simple scientific experiment which would determine once and for all whether or not humans an chimpanzees belong to the same genus. It probably will never be conducted, for political reasons.
The question which remains to be answered is, can political methods be used to control the spread of scientific knowledge? Up until a few years ago I would have thought a resounding NO. Today, I'm not so certain. As technology advances inevitably further and further beyond the understanding of the common person, and so deeper into the domain of multi-national corporations, its uses are being controlled by ever more draconian laws. There is a very real possibility that the world could enter a new Dark Age.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I first learned about Japanese schools closing through a friend, and then confirmed it by talking with another friend's wife, Yumiko. "It's because people are being selfish," she said, with some anger.
My research into NEET, freeters, hikikomori, support this.
As for the environmentalists:
-- the Unibomber Manifesto
You may also want to read Adbusters, Daniel Quinn, and whatever other primitivist tract you can find.
Myself, I just know these things because I've been steeped in the culture of community health centers, co-ops, IndyMedia, various movements and efforts.
I was in the community health center, the other day. I decided to look through the books they had available for kids. I picked one up about a couple of young kids (9? 10? 11? 12?) that find a portal to the future. In the future, the world has been picked apart "by technology," but there's this thriving citadel of Gaia: Where the people have no technology, and have a huge organized society, and have all these rules against developing any sort of technology.
The boy has a prolicivity to inventing, and gets these ideas about machines to make, and things like that. The girl is more "in touch with nature," though, and doesn't see what's so necessary about the boy's machine making.
The long trials in the book are all dedicated to showing that they boy's prolicivities are wrong, and should be avoided, at all costs.
The story ends with the boy realizing the error of his ways, and realizing he should be paying more attention to the universal sisterhood of nature.
I don't remember the name of the book; Sorry. But it's not really tricky to find; These kinds of messages are all over the place.
Here's another source: My best friend Phil. Phil's been my best friend since around 4th grade. (I'm 28, right now.) He went more the green route, me more the technology route. We've stayed up many late nights, talking over all sorts of things. I remember tromping through the golden grass fields back of UCSC. (We both grew up in Santa Cruz.) I remember him telling me about how all the top soil would be gone within 10 years, and there'd be no more food for anybody.
At any rate, we've had many discussions about activist strategy, and we've talked about mythologizing environmentalism several times. I think he thought it was a good idea. Myself, I love nature, but I also love computers and machines and buildings.
I don't have a book or a plan guide that I can point you to, and say: "There! There it is! The master plans! The blueprints!" I imagine there are several of them, floating out there. (EcoTopia?) But I assure you, this is quite real; This is a motive force; People are doing this. First hand, I tell you, people have been talking about this.
It's no more surprising than car manufacturers mythologizing cars.
I read a scientific prediction on the limit of population growth. It will stop at 9 thousand millions in the best case and 12 in the worst case. It's Africa, which has a relatively low population, which will grow the most in the next years. Asia is already slowing down, and Europe and America are decreasing.
I'm sorry I can't tell the reference, I don't have it at hand right now.
Of course, this is if Mother Earth doesn't get fed up with our stupidity and then decides to eliminate a great portion of us with some horrendous plague.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Another bit of wisdom that I read in a co-worker's office:
When the last tree has fallen, when the last river has dried, and the last fish caught, then men will learn that they can't eat money.
Become? Unfortunately, for at least most of modern history (I'm not completely sure about before about 1900 or so), we've been fighting day by day to become less repressive, however recently we've taken about ten big steps backwards in this fight, and it is indeed a dark day. Don't count liberty out yet, there are many of us left who still believe it is possible, and who will fight for it.
Not just no, but hell no.
Zoology depends on factors such as how territory is used, how resources are gathered, the sex ratio, mating systems, sexual selection, fitness of species, kin selection, parent-offspring conflict, group selection, and a variety of other factors are determinate in changes in population ecology.
Population is self-limiting, not self-destructive. Even animals choose how much fucking to do.
Anyone who seriously wants to have an educated opinion on "overpopulation" needs to take a zoology course in population ecology.. or a wakeup call.
just look at the population centers of the world, they are centers of prosperity, not savage poverty or scare resources. Besides, if we arranged each person of the world's population inside a 1m square area, it would barely fill the state of Texas. It's not like the earth is really crowded, people just choose to congregate into population areas because it is so beneficial/.
But like someone noticed, prosperity slows population growth, poverty increases it... but do you think millions of years of evolution would wire us to respond in the exact opposite of what is beneficial?
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
In a famous article in a 1967 issue of Science, scientist and Christian Lynn White argues that western Christianity is largely responsible for this attitude, on the basis of Genesis 1:28 "fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
There is certainly some justification for this idea, I have heard it taught in churches in my lifetime. I've been looking into it a little recently.
The 'dominion hypothesis' does not seem to be common in early Jewish writings, and therefore was probably not dominant in the early church either. Augustine's commentary on Genesis does not promote it, although he mentions the idea in passing elsewhere. Aquinas however does support a dominion view, although he bases his argument on natural law rather than Genesis. Luther's commentary on Genesis notes that dominion was granted to Adam and Eve before the fall, but that fallen humanity might would be a bad choice to exercise such power.
St Francis of course was a proto-animal liberationist, but his views were at odds with the dominant viewpoint over most of church history. However, the foundation of the (R)SPCA in Britain (which in turn lead to similar organisations elsewhere), was certainly informed by Christian viewpoints. However, animal liberation is probably peripheral issue within the environmental movement as a whole, since its core concern in animals alive today rather than the future of the planet.
The World Council of Churches has been publishing reports opposing this viewpoint for 30 years, and most hierarchical denominations including the Roman Catholic cheurch have also come out against the dominion viewpoint more recently. However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still taught at grass roots level. Catholic teaching of course has some difficulties to resolve with population stabilistation.
On the whole, I would say that there is certainly justice to White's accusation. The difficulty comes in separating the damage done by western industiralisation from the progress acheived. If the dominon (mis-)reading of Genesis is responsible for the damage western civilisation has done to the environment, then must it not also be given the credit for the benefits we have reaped in terms of healthcare, standard of living, increased leisure and so on? However, clearly on the basis of current scintific opinion it needs to be vigorously opposed.
Wikipedia on Lynn White
Land area of texas 261,914 sq miles
6 1%2C914+sq+miles+%2F+6601891967+
e nce8.jpg
http://www.netstate.com/states/tables/st_size.htm
Population of the earth 6601891967
http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop
math?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=2
102.751476 m2
Yep, you can build a house for everyone in that 10 meters on a side parcel.
Your can have the top L5 section
http://paces.geo.utep.edu/seeley/proterozoic_sequ
enjoy!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
1. Disclaimer. I do not know to what extent humans affect the weather compared to "natural" phenomena.
2. Compare to (1) I am more confident that the global warming takes place now.
3. Humans are capable in principle to change the climate drastically (for example, "nuclear winter" scenario seems quite realistic).
4. The message coming from (1-3) is pretty clear: "controlled nuclear winter" to offset "greenhouse summer". Blow up some of them Russian nukes in the stratosphere above both poles and see what happens.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The only difference between north american indians - those "noble savages" - and europeans is that there wasn't enough of them to effectivly fuck things up on big enough a scale to make a difference.
Ever heard of Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump?
It's in Alberta. Look it up - see what happened there. Keep it in mind the next time you hear somebody decry the horrors of the seal hunt.
People are doing it, no doubt. Whether a significant portion of environmentalists - whatever that word exactly means - does it is a different story. And of course, it has no relevance at all to the points of the more practically minded environmentalists, who are looking for sustainable development because, you know, anything less is obviously insane.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
It's overzealous nutjobs like yourself which make global warming appear to be some sort of scam, to the public at large.
Now go back over to the kiddie table and play with your UFO action figures, so the adults can talk...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You misspelled "Dated Wisdom from a Hollywood Hack."
Damn, I ran out of mod points, that was funny.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
If the need for profit were eliminated from our global resource allocation system, the need for horrendous waste would be eliminated, and greed would become irrelevant. Power hungry assholes could indulge themselves in some other way, hopefully one that wont destroy our environment.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Earth's population is currently held at artificially high levels because the availibility of cheap energy and chemical supplies in the form of Fossil Fuels.
When the Fossil Fuels run out, we are going to find we can't feed everyone properly and the human population is going to crash, we can either choose to limit population now and decrease it slowly over time or we let Mother Nature choose the appropriate population over a decade or so. I know which I would prefer
Of course, we might find a cheap plentiful supply of energy and chemical feed stock which would avert that situation, but it's unlikely.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
I'm sure he was sincere, but Ted Kaczynski isn't really representative of any mainstream, and very few lunatic, environmentalists.
People have less kids because in developed nations they are more of a burden than anything else. In developing countries, you need lots of kids to help farm.
Donald Trump just had his 5th yesterday.
Your post reads very much as an horror story to me.
You see, there are two sides in the Global Warming arena:
- One that says: Global Warming is happening and will turn into a catastrofe. We have to DO SOMETHING before it's too late.
- The other says: Global Warming is not really happing, and even if the temperatures are going up it's all part of the normal long-term cycle of temperature variance. We NEED NOT DO ANYTHING about it.
Both sides support their positions by putting out "scientific" opinions.
The side that defends DOING SOMETHING has to convince people that there is a real problem and we can do something about it.
The side that defends the option of NOT DOING ANYTHING just has to make people not fully believe either side. If they make people cynical about both side's arguments (ie, using FUD techniques) they will have achieved their aim of carrying on as usual and not having to do act on the global warming problem.
By just spreading confusion the Bush team can avoid that enough voters are so convinced of the critical nature of the global warming problem that they press the current US administration to do something about it. If not pressed by enough voters, they can keep on sidding with the lobbyists that fund their campaigns.
Almost all environmentalists i know, are really into technology and innovation.
:-(
Unfortunatly that doesn't seem to be how they come off.
Some develop lightweigt vehicles.
Lightweight vehicals don't offer as much protection. They're also worse in areas where snow is a fact of life. Finally, I haven't seen lightweight vehicles that can tow a boat or camper.
You know what's the main reason for farmers to switch to organic farming?
Because it costs less (no need for pesiticides) and they can sell it for more. For some reason, organic seems to cost more than non-organic foods. Also, many farms are labeling food organic when its not actually organic at all.
They think one can have a high (or even higher) standard of living with much less environmental impact.
Unfortunatly environmentally friendly is more expensive
From Wikipedia:
"Truthiness is the quality by which a person purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or to what the person might conclude from intellectual examination. Stephen Colbert popularized the word during the first episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called "The Wørd.""
What our government and half of the voting population considers to have a lot of truthiness:
"Pollution can always be reversible and not only is under control but over-hyped"
"The USA Leading (aka ""protecting"") the free and the not-so-free world is God's plan"
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
You really want to know this? O.K. Don't say you were not warned. I have rot-13 encoded it, just in case it gives anybody nightmares. I repeat: do not attempt to decode this if you are at all capable of being offended!
Betnavfzf juvpu orybat gb gur fnzr fcrpvrf {sbe vafgnapr, gur qbzrfgvp qbt naq gur jvyq jbys} pna cebqhpr bssfcevat pncnoyr bs oerrqvat.
Betnavfzf juvpu orybat gb qvssrerag fcrpvrf jvguva gur fnzr trahf {sbe vafgnapr, gur ubefr naq gur qbaxrl} pna cebqhpr bssfcevat, ohg gur bssfcevat ner vapncnoyr bs oerrqvat.
V guvax lbh pna jbex bhg gur erfg sbe lbhefrys.
Sorry, but you did ask. If you hadn't been an AC, I could have contacted you by another means.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I saw a tongue-in-cheek poster at the Society for Neuroscience a few years ago, in which the authors compared portrayals of different professions in a large number of movies. Overall, the most negatively portrayed profession was murderer, and scientists were right in there at #2. The methods employed for this survey involved beer and pizza.
The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what science is, what it's useful for, or what scientists do. To be fair, it's not a question with a simple answer like 42. But it's not surprising that people who make policy decisions at all levels of government know nothing whatsoever about science. It's mis-portrayed almost completely in the media, and probably mis-taught at all levels of education. Scientists are not valued by society in any meaningful way.
Any scientist whose work is in the popular press probably has a story about how their work was portrayed in a way to mislead, not inform people. Perhaps someone will repost the link to that recent insightful article about how few science reporters have any science background.
The government has been rewriting science more blatantly in environmental sciences than in other areas. But it's the other kind of rewriting that's more insidious and harmful. Necessarily, most science funding comes from the government. They decide what to fund and what not to fund. Serious scientists get input into this decision, but not the last word. What's insidious about it is that no individual scientist is doing what they do because the government told them. But since there's such an oversupply of scientists, including a healthy supply interested for their own reasons in doing the specific things the government would like, the government can shape science to whatever extent they want without there ever being a single scientist who was specifically influenced.
That link is funny, I haven't laughed at wackos on the internet enough lately!!!!
I am dubious it costs less on a per unit yield basis. Otherwise why wouldn't every farmer be doing it? It's the higher-priced niche market that makes it profitable.
Reminds me of a post I saw on usenet a while back where a guy was wondering why he had to pay extra to his power company to buy his electricity from renewable sources. Shouldn't they give him a discount instead to encourage its use?
You're right though that often the cheapest, most convenient way to do something is rarely the most environmentally friendly.
Do you imagine that the climate will change just a little, and then stabilise, regardless of how much more CO2 we poor into the system? That is not what happens at all - the ecosystem (and available nutrient) will continue to degrade until we stop poisoning it or until there is nothing left, at which point, we die. Although we'll probably die before then. Even if the human population is decimated (likely, with consequent decrease in drinkable water and arable land) such that no new gas is added to the system, it will take eons for the earth to recover naturally.
Don't fight global warming, it's a losing battle. However, human can and will do what we do best...and that's adapt.
Surely, there can't be a clearer demonstration of our inability to adapt than our refusal to adapt NOW when it is relatively easy, rather than 50 years time, when our industry is crippled, we are starving and riddled with disease, and the problem to be fixed is orders of magnitude worse than it is now.
I don't know what kind of environmentalists you hang out with, but as a born and bred son of Oregon hippies, I think you are full of shit. Most environmentalists are far more educated and open minded and pro-technology than you give them credit for. However, where I think you get confused is believeing that pro-coal burning power plant is somehow the equivalent to being pro-technology. I think most environmentalists are, almost by definition, liberal, progressive, pro-progress, pro-equality, and striving towards both inner and external perfection. They are pro-technology because when they look around they say, "there must be a way to do this better." For most environmentalist, this is an inherintly pro-technology stance.
I have a new experiement to try.
Go visit your local Baptist (or any religion, really) church or even a professional football stadium. Start talking about technology, genetic manipulation, virtual reality, prevasive computing, nanotechnology. See how far you can get. Compare your results to your previous results in the "eco village" and see which group is more open to your ideas. I belive that the environmentalists, where they do disagree with you vision, are more likely to be able to express an alternative vision and be able to intelligently debate. Who knows, you might even learn something.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
There is no need to limit population growth nature has a way of keeping populations in check. Aids, Sars, and soon the Bird Flu are natures way of curbing the population. The best way to thin the herd is WAR requiring males of breeding age to fight for their country is a good way to slow the reproduction rates. So I guess Bush is doing his part to help out the enviroment after all.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
His point was not that he couldn't speak freely. His point was that he was told to do a study of global warming. Before publishing his findings, a former oil company lobbist twisted his writing to suit the white house agenda. I'm sure this is not the first administration to do this. The problem is not that he was stiffled from reporting his findings to the world. It is just that his report can/will be used to create policy. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can say just about any trash they want (witness the story about tinfoil hats), but how many policymakers are going to believe something from the Internet over a study funded by NASA?
What restrictions? Dude! You're on 60 Minutes as you say this complaining that the White House won't let you say exactly what you're saying. How in the fuck are you being restricted?
He said that people who didn't play ball with the white house were considered outcasts and had trouble getting promoted. In a bureaucracy, this is the kiss of death. There are plenty of people who are smart and eagar who get labeled "not a team player" and never move up because of this. Like it or not, that's what happens. I could see that much worse in a hyper-political environment, where a powerful person in an administration could just make a simple phone call to this guys boss "expressing concerns" about the report is enough to label him as someone who rocks the boat. I hope he has a consulting job lined up, because he's never going anywhere with NASA.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
The question is always, what technology. As an experiment, you can also visit your local eco village and talk about exciting high-tech area's like solar cells, wind turbines, permaculture or integrated agriculture. You can also go to the local right-wing party and talk about these things. Note the difference in perception.
I think there are many more brands of environmentalists than the 'weird people' you talk about. I'm not into mythologizing, so i have less chance to meet people who mythologize. Anyways, the environmentalists i meet do not tend to mythologize nature. They know nature is cruel, but insist nature can live without man, but man can't live without nature. They like to spend time in nature, but who doesn't. A lot of them would never live outside a city.
Trust me, I work for the government.
EdGCM http://edgcm.columbia.edu/ comes out of the NASA GISS lab http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ that James Hansen heads. EdGCM lets you run your own climate model on your computer! Check it out!
Space and Computers.
I liked visiting /. for years, until the dirty hippie liberals came here and took over like they do everywhere. But they are not going to drive me away!
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches _quote04.html
imminent Audio pronunciation of "imminent" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-nnt)
adj.
About to occur; impending: in imminent danger.
vs.
eminent Audio pronunciation of "eminent" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-nnt)
adj.
1. Towering or standing out above others; prominent: an eminent peak.
2. Of high rank, station, or quality; noteworthy: eminent members of the community.
3. Outstanding, as in character or performance; distinguished: an eminent historian. See Synonyms at noted.
You would be right, except that _60 Minutes_ interview is ephemera, while a report on climate-change, rewritten to not offend members of the petrochemical lobby, will be posted on a public website and referenced for years. This is similar to NIH, which had a website on birth-control edited to abstinence only, and of course the recent Big Bang flap, where a political flunky wanted a public essay rewritten to cast doubt on modern cosmology. Being able to speak is of no use if nobody hears it, or if they hear it in passing, but then can only find documents that say the opposite. Being discouraged from speaking because presenting reproducible results which disagree with predetermined conceits will result in loss of employment is being supressed, though in a softer manner than that used in Iran.
Nobody is arguing that NASA scientists are being rounded up, or threatened at night by Men in Black, but their work is being systematically supressed or altered beyond recognition by an ideologically driven administration which has nothing but contempt for the rational thought-processes of the enlightenment. They have publicly derided their opponents as being members of the "Reality-based Community", and openly stated that they believe that they make their own Reality.
This administration is arrogating powers to the executive branch in a manner not seen since the Nixon administration, without pursuing the middle-of-the-road policies of Richard Nixon. You may approve of the war in Iraq, support the tax cuts, or be a fan of whatever other administration policy you choose, but don't be blind that there are side-effects, and those need to be kept in mind.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
weren't those the bad guys from the cartoon series, "Gargoyles?"
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Is your co-worker the Onceler from The Lorax? I always wondered what happened to that guy...
You would think if this person was being censored, he wouldn't be able to tell people he was being censored...
You're assuming that the government has policy instruments that are consistent. Remember back when you could export a book with crypto source code but not the object code?
Any organization functions within certain sharp lines that are drawn through fuzzy contexts. It follows that there are cases that are nearly alike as peas in a pod that are treated like, uh, apples and oranges.
People can be sensible, even enlightened; organizations only have policies.
Either way, what's scientific about this article? Please file this under hysterics, conspiracy, and politics.
What is scientific is that science is a process, not a body of facts.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/01061 5071248.htm
Yeah, right. I challenge you to document a direct quote in which Hansen "flatly declared that based on his computer model, the upcoming winter of 1988-89 would be the warmest on record." No climatologist would "flatly declare" such a prediction for an individual year. Other sources of variability are such that the climate models are incapable of making such a prediction for a single year. Even on a longer time scale, it is typical to present a range of scenarios reflecting the uncertainties in the projections.
Here is what Hansen says about it, including the figure with the predictions that he presented to Congress with the actual temperature data overlaid. Looks like the actual data falls pretty squarel in the range of his predicitons.
LOL... I'd be willing to bet that you own more than 2 guns and have plans to or have already built a bunker on you property... ;^)
This is not a flame; I'm just teasing you!
Yeah it's not like we live on a 13 Mm diameter sphere of molten hot resources or anything...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This is what you get when the big business lobby takes over the government. What did you expect?
The answer is *not* population control - it's habitat expansion, something that is only possible by advancing technology. I hear these arguments all the time - "Why are we spending billions on space exploration when there are people without enough to eat?". It's a specious argument, and I can't even beleive people would take it seriously.
We cannot halt progress while everyone catches up. I applaud efforts to reduce the "digital divide", and lessen poverty, and I support such causes myself. But while this work is important, we cannot neglect the future of our species.
The Earth will not sustain us forever, regardless of how long you think it can sustain us. So, living on earth is, itself, not sustainable in the long run. The only answer is developing better ways of manipulating our environment to suit us, and manipulating ourselves to deal with different environments. Trying to control our population only leads to less people to help find solutions, and we need all the diverse brain power we can get.
There has always been speculation about how many people the earth can sustain, but so far history has shown us that technology can keep ahead of population growth - we can now grow more food per acre than ever before. Yes, there are pockets of famine and drought - but these are issues that need better technological (and political) solutions than are currently being used.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
If he makes a film as good as his last one (or better), more folks will be in the know.
(Granted, a lot of people won't see it because it challenges what they already believe to be true. If you find such a person, do your patriotic duty. Kill them.)
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
There is an idiom in English for reporting a text containing a misspelling or other inappropriate usage. The poster should have written:
But this imminent (sic) scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush..."
This points out the mistake to the reader while indicating that the poster recognized it.
Jim was mainly persecuted by a 24-year old appointed to NASA's PR department by the administration (instead of normal job application channels because he done campaign work). This kid made the news because he had falsely claimed two college degrees he didnt have and was fired. Jim should lighten up now. If you cant beleive the kids resume, then his press releases are probably all fake too.
the location of YOUR PLOT... my rebuttal was the last link... a lot of TEXAS ain't home building sites.
Further,
yes, you can LIVE in that much space, but can you eat, clother, drink, and reduce waste from that much of the planet?
it's not enough that you have space to live, as space for your
FOOD TO COME FROM, WATER TO COME FROM, WASTE TO DISPOSE OF, CLOTHES & house manufacture? the list goes on.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
-He's a GOVERNMENT employee-
Exactly, he is his own boss. He is working for himself to give himself the best information possible.
So because the purveyors of lies and the purveyors of truth both are flawed humans, you're not going to listen to either of them even though you can tell which is which? Lunacy.
Who is trying to gain more power -- the politician or the scientist? Surely the fact that being a politician is the business of wielding power implies the former? Who has the greater vested interest -- a scientist working for the government whose coming to the press could at best get him a book deal, or the politician representing the power of the U.S. government and the lobbyists of multi-billion dollar multinationals?
It's like the Bush administration who tried to discredit Clark by saying he had a conflict of interest in promoting his book. And the Bush administration had no vested interest... except for defending the "preemptive war" doctrine of the only superpower. Surely these interests are equal...
Or maybe, as the many who have come forward to describe the truth-fudging of the administration suggest, they aren't. Maybe one has a little more vested interest in muddying the truth. Naw, couldn't be... both are human!
Of course scientists are human. Of course they want things for themselves. Yet lying and fudging answers is not a good way to get what you want in the field of science. Look at Fleischmann and Pons, who went to the press with research that wouldn't as it stood withstand peer review. Their fame is limited to having their names be synonymous with disgraced scientists.
Is it thus plausible that every scientist who believes global warming and climate change are occuring, which is virtually every one not tied to a party with a vested interest in denying these are occuring, is themselves operating solely for their agendas and not science?
Scientists will always be human. If them being human is your reason for disregarding them (as well as every other human, I would presume) then that's just laziness. Engage your brain, use critical thinking, and try to see for yourself what the truth is through the noise caused by everyone's respective bias. And don't be afraid of the common-sense conclusion that one group may in fact be more biased than another.
The enemies of Democracy are
Of course! If he's everywhere that means he's omnipresent. Who else do we know who's omnipresent? Someone who goes under the stage name of "YHWH" and who we have no pictures of.
So obviously James Hansen is God! He uses His omniscience to warn us of the impeding catastrophe! You might ask why He doesn't simply make the US government let him talk. The answer is that the current US government is His doing! He got pissed because His puppy got run over by an SUV and now He wants to punish us by telling us what's going to happen while making sure that the US government will never, ever react!
Whoa.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
"And management of the earth belongs to charismatic leaders who can lead hoi polloi on cruscades in their quest for power."
Yeah, I can see where this is heading.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
From wikipedia
"The nation's forest resources, although abundant, have not been well developed to sustain a large lumber industry. Of the 245,000 km of forests, 198000 km are classified as active forests."
245000/377835(area of japan)= around 65%.
I don't know why you think what you think, but I can't honestly say that having 65% of your land area covered by forests really supports the idea that
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood."
In fact, that statement is just ridiculous.
The fact is that forests in Japan are hard to reach, so logging them is more expensive than importing from somewhere else.
So, my I ask you a serious question? Why would you post something that you hadn't researched? Any search at all would have given you the information I have.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
You better check your numbers, guy. The ENTIRE US is only 3.7 million square miles, and that's including Alaska which is freaking huge. Anyway, it's not a matter of space, it's that humans are pretty toxic creatures, especially given modern living habits.
As for "millions of years of evolution"... hell yes, it would wire us to do the opposite of what's beneficial. Humanity hasn't spent any meaningful amount of time on an evolutionary scale as a global organism. All our biological patterns are evolved in the setting of small hunter gatherer groups, as that's what we've been for the majority of our race's time on this planet. And since we have MANY examples of over-population and over-industrialization decimating a society, it's certainly not in question that it CAN happen, it's just at what point it would happen on a global scale, and whether we've crossed that point yet.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Call it Socialism, callit capitalism, call it democracy. A rose by any other name. Communism is not inherenlty evil. Socialism is not inherently evil. All these things are ways to create a better society. They all fail due to the same things. Humans are Greedy. Humans are Lazy. These 2 conditions have a tendency to derail even the most sicere of social ideals. Untill people can think about how things will HELP OTHER PEOPLE before they think about how it will help them as an individual in the short term, we will always have this problem.
In other words, until that big fuckin' asteroid fixes everything.
0xB315AA8D852DCD3F3DCA578FD2E0BF88
It's no joke, it's The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement!
The documents were proven to be forgeries by Peter Tytell, proof of which was even included in CBS's own Thornburgh-Boccardi report. It's in Appendix 4.
You can't spin this as a liberal versus conservative thing,
Yes - normally you'd expect Conservatives to be FOR conservation.
Intead - they seem to just want to expend our world's resources as quickly as possible. Oh. I'm sorry. "Their" world's resources.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's funny you should put it in a formal argument like that. Just last night, I was thinking about the Catholics' interesting stance on faith and reason - namely, that they are not incompatible and if your faith seems to disagree with sound reasoning, you're misunderstanding either the articles of your faith of the results of the reasoning. I was also thinking of it in a formal way much like yours:
Axiom: The articles of Catholic faith are true.
Axiom: The conclusions of sound reasoning are true.
Therefore: Any apparent contradiction between faith and reason is a misunderstanding.
I really rather like it. It's a good way for a religion to save face and maintain backward compatibility (to use an analogy) while still keeping up with the progress of science. So long as they don't intentionally misunderstand the science to leave it compatible with their faith. It seems of the two, faith is the harder one to ground in fact or otherwise justify (kind of by it's nature), and so would be the one more appropriately prone to change in understanding in the face of an apparent contradiction.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
This was reported on NPR back in January, Hansen was on an interview shortly thereafter (early February, if I remember right), and has been reported online in great detail, including George Deutschs fall from grace after he was exposed as a fraud.
e ak-no-evil.html e aking-news-george-deutsch-did-not.html s a-science-censor-resigns.html u tschgate-in-media.html
For those who didn't know offhand, Deutsch is the person who was primarily (though not solely) responsible for the censorship attempts within Nasa. It turned out he never graduated from Texas A&M as his resume claimed, because he left early to work the Bush campaign - can you say Plum Pie?
Read the Scientific Activist blog entries here (in chronological order):
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/01/sp
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/br
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/na
http://scientificactivist.blogspot.com/2006/02/de
The author of the Scientific Activist blog, Nick Anthis, is the person that initially uncovered Deutschs falsification of his resume and tipped off the NYT (and never got credit for the scoop, can you believe that?). This was back in early February.
A few fundamental truths to chew on: A) Most scientists are cheap whores. They got used to supporting liberal doctrines to earn their pay while democrats controlled congress. Now they moan and cry because somebody "moved their cheese", and they have to learn a new set of political doctrines to get their free drink from the government teet. Quick - call the Waaahhhmbulance! B) Global warming is a hoax C) EVEN if it was real it won't hurt anything because the ice caps are like the ice that floats in your drink. They will shrink as they melt and the net change in sea level will be zero point zero inches. D) If Global warming WAS real it would bring enormous benefit to mankind by dramatically increasing the amount of farmable land available - it would offset world hunger significantly. E) There is no Gaia. The earth is just big a ball of dirt. The only thing special about it is that I live here. F) The best way to reduce any greenhouse effect is to fire a lot of useless scientists to decrease their spewing of hot gas.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
How is he muzzled if hes still talking to the press about being muzzled? Doesn't seem very muzzled to me. More likely he has an axe to grind. Everyone has an axe to grind I take no one at face value. Environmentalist are a great example. It seems there religion (and it is a religion of sorts) has little to do with fixing the environement and more to do with promoting socialist progressive ideals.
One example of this is when anyone mentions a potential technical solution to carbon emissions. They poo poo it saying it won't do enough to curb consumption. Which is really what this movement seems to be all about. It seems they don't like consumerism, sprawl, SUvs, cars in general, personal property and the distribution of wealth in the world. I think it's time we start calling them on it. They are all watermelons green on the outside and red on the inside. Oh and by the way same as when you lot espouse your true beliefs without the sky is falling environmental slant. We still aren't interested in your world socialism.
"m" = "meter," not "mile."
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
One word for you: Technology.
Bacteria, rabbits, and deer don't have it. We do.
We don't even come close to using 1% of all the energy that we get from the sun.
And the "reserves" that you think are going to run out, will last for thousands of years if we start using nuclear power plants more.
So stop yelling that the sky is falling, and look around you.
I thought it was a scientists job to find the truth.
Truth is often lacking in short-term profitability.
Someone has to pay those scientists.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
troll ?
Hmm. Nice to see how many morons there are out there... Bah. Well, it looks like the old saying "Ignorance is bliss" is once again sadly true...
Wow, modded down. The beatiful irony is that I'm being censored for pointing out that
a) CBS has no credibility, and has been party to the manufacture of falsified documents to bolster its assertions, and
b) Hansen has no credibility, and has been well documented as saying that it's okay to lie about your research and falsify data to get your point across to the public.
Leftdot, indeed.
What a time to have used up my mod points.
Make love, not reality television.
Nicely done sir! I do believe I have found a new .sig (with your permission of course)
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
woah, woah, this isn't a monarchy. Last time I checked, NASA was not under the executive branch. They are responsible to congress, then the people. Democracy assumes informed voters, so for congress to receive information that is not as accurate as possible is against the core of both democracy and NASA's purpose. And it isn't necessarily just his wishes. If it is the policy of NASA for its reports to be as truthful as possible, then he is just ignoring a middle manager. If I were working for a company, and my boss wanted me to lie on a report because it would help him, at the cost of the company and the world, I wouldn't find that an ethical course.
Our main sources of energy are still those that were used 50 years ago. For all the technology we've created in the meantime, we are still dependent on those types of energy (fossil and uranium).
The amount of uranium readily available in the earth's crust is pretty much unknown at this time, but I've never heard an estimate anywhere near "thousands of years" worth - especially considering that energy use is increasing everywhere in the world. If India and China start to use the same amount of energy per capita that we do, we've got a fraction of the time you might expect.
My main point - don't rely on technology. We have one chance - and one chance only - to get this right. We all hope you're right. We all hope the sky isn't falling, and we all hope that we have thousands of years of cheap energy.
But would you bet the future of mankind on it?
Last post!
It's INTERESTING how some people CAPITALIZE words to try and make a POINT. I WONDER if they YELL the words in their HEADS when they type the RHETORIC, or if they are just MAKING a conscious DECISION to try and LEAD a reader by using EMOTIONAL responses?
ANYWAY, I think it's INTERESTING.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Errm, yeah, right. Hitler supported population control the same way he supported abortion. He tried to force it on "sub-humans" and made it a capital offense for aryans. When will you dumbitch pro-lifers get that into your skulls?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
As for what govt employees can do, they first must follow the law. That does include some protection for whistleblowers, but it's not unlimited. Otherwise, they must follow their superior's direction. NASA ain't that far removed from the military. If they have an ethical problem, there may be ethic/compliance complaint channels to follow. Or they could resign. Blabbing to congress outside the legally-described Congressional oversight process is gross insubordination.
The deferal of procreation is doing more to limit population, than the number of children is. When a couple has 2 kids by 20, then 4 grand kids by 40, then 8 great-grand kids by 80; then the population has increased by 14 people in the span of one generation, waiting till 35 increases the population by 6 people.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
That is not an accurate definition of genus and species. There are separate species that can produce viable fertile offspring if artifically forced to mate, and thete are separate species within the same genus that cannot be crossed to produce offspring at all. So your experiment wouldn't actually prove anything in terms of genus or species.
All other primates have twenty four pair of chromosomes. Humans have the virtually identical DNA and virtually identical chromosomes, except he have a mutation that visibly glues two of them together into a single strand. So we have twenty three pair with one of them being double length. In most cases any unpaired chromosome is highly disruptive to normal cell division. Any such crossfertilized egg will fail to divide properly.
Still, if you really wanted to go ahead with that experiminet anyway, you could do some extremely minimal genetic engineering and either split apart the doubled human chromosome, or you could glue together the right pair of cromosomes from some other primate. Then you'd have matched pairs of twenty three or twenty four.
The closest human relative BTW is the chimpanzee, with a mere 1.6% genetic distance / genetic difference from us. That is actually an extremely small difference, considering that any two chimpanzees have a difference of 0.7% from each other. A human is about twice as far from a chimp as any two random chimps are from each other.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Wow! Your right, it is Independent! So are 62 other agencies (see list below). This seems to strech the seperation of powers beyond the breaking point!
e nt.shtml
http://www.firstgov.gov/Agencies/Federal/Independ
African Development Foundation
AMTRAK (National Railroad Passenger Corporation)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Commission on Civil Rights
Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)
Corporation for National and Community Service
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board
Election Assistance Commission
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Farm Credit Administration
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Federal Election Commission (FEC)
Federal Housing Finance Board
Federal Labor Relations Authority
Federal Maritime Commission
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission
Federal Reserve System
Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
General Services Administration (GSA)
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Inter-American Foundation
International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB)
Merit Systems Protection Board
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
National Capital Planning Commission
National Council on Disability
National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)
National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
National Mediation Board
National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
National Transportation Safety Board
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
Office of Compliance
Office of Government Ethics
Office of Personnel Management
Office of Special Counsel
Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Panama Canal Commission
Peace Corps
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Postal Rate Commission
Railroad Retirement Board
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Selective Service System
Small Business Administration (SBA)
Social Security Administration (SSA)
Tennessee Valley Authority
Trade and Development Agency
United States Agency for International Development
United States International Trade Commission
United States Postal Service (USPS)
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
He also goes on to state that the Clinton administration didn't force its conclusions into his mouth as a scientist. He doesn't mention them ever preventing him from publishing as he saw fit, either.
Both administrations were looking for certain conclusions, okay. It shouldn't surprise anyone, after the wiretapping and the WMD justification and South Carolina 2000 and so on ad nauseum, that Bush's team is the one that got morally confused about ends and means.
This story is about the effect of absolutism on science. The larger story is about absolutism and Bush and his supporters.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.
Actually, Japan has the highest percentage of forestation of any first world country (almost 70%).
As for other imports of Japan, you are more correct: they import much of their food, including staples like rice and seafood. This puts the population of the island at risk in the event of instability of their trading network. The modern economic environment, however, means that the population of Japan is not at risk as long as the world remains somewhat stable and demand for their products remains strong.
The declining birth rate there and in most developed countries is one of the few pieces of good news in the long-term story of human survival on this planet. IMO anyway.
Regards,
Ross
being done.
Follow the money.
Bear with me for a moment.
9/11 was a great wake up call, for Insurance companies.
They relied that they ahd been insuring the risk terrorism for free.
They hate that, so they now include those risks when determining rates.
Then they said, "what other risks are we insuring for free?"
Well, global warming might be one, lets study it. And they did. Not in a political way, but by talking to experts.
Now Insurance companies are adding those risks to the factors for determining rates. Companies rates will be going up.
in the last 10 years, there have been over 700 papers published about global warming, two things are not disputed:
1) That it is happening
2) That man is a very large factor in what we are seeing happening now.
Now, who did the Bush administration and lobbiest go to in order to get an opinion of glabal watming? Michel Chriton. A science fiction author with no creditionals. NASA has the world expert on this, but he is not saying what Bush wants to hear, so he is edited.
A lot of evidence at this time seems to point out the glabal warming is a state, not a 'slow' change. Meaning something in the enviroment changes, and the enviroment moves to find a new point of equilibrium. This can be a lot of sun spot activity, an enormous eruption(were talking far larger the the St. Helen eruption), Comet impact, and yes, man kind spewing millions of metric tons of pollution into the enviroment every year.
We have glacier streaming water year around, glacier that only had a little run off during the summer months are not flowing stream of water. More water flowing out then being added to.
The enviroment is looking for a new equirlibrium, and until it gets there you will see extremes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why would environmentalism be against technology and developing?
it's not environmentalist as in people seeking reasonable ways to protect our mutual environment from damaging changes; but environmentalists as in a quasi-religion with Gaian/Vegan/Wiccan overtones where anything involveing humans are unnatural and tending toward evil, humans with any technology strongly tending toward evil and male WASPs in the US being evil incarnate.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
They're kind of the universally recognized bad guys to conspiracy theorists. Oddly enough, there really was an Illuminati, according to what I understand, but nothing along the lines of this global dominating power, just a sort of small group, with an idea for global domination, several centuries ago. The idea of their existence was enough to keep the rumor mill running.
You're probably not going to need a coat!
I don't know of any published studies that say American scientists are leaving the U.S. in large numbers. However, the U.S. job market for people with degrees in astronomy and the space sciences is horrible right now and it keeps getting worse. I got an e-mail a few minutes ago saying that NASA funding for a program to which I was going to submit a proposal was just reduced from $4 million to $1 million. NASA anticipates that this program is going to get requests for $24 million this year, so quite a few people are not going to get NASA funding. Most of NASA's money is going to support the Space Station, the Space Shuttle, and Bush's half-baked vision for conquering Mars - not science. The more senior scientists I know have told me that they don't ever remember NASA funding in our field being quite this bad before. The NSF is not doing much better.
Currently, I am a researcher supported by soft-money. I've been applying to faculty positions so I won't need to depend so much on NASA funds, but I'm not having any luck. Two faculty positions I applied for were cancelled due to budget cuts about a month after the application deadline. I have been told by several different people that since I am having trouble getting research funding and finding faculty jobs here in the U.S., I should look for positions in Europe. Unfortunately, my European colleagues tell me the funding situation is not good there either, as their countries are also cutting back on funding for many space science programs. I don't really want to move to another country, and even if I did want to leave the U.S., there isn't really anywhere I could go. Funding in the space sciences is tight everywhere right now. I'm hoping I can make the jump to industry, but I'm not sure if the job market in the aerospace industry is any better.
Mate, it's all yours. Enjoy...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
When an unknown blowhard on the Internet makes this pathetically weak and logically worthless argument, it is lame, but understandable. Bilious partisan hatred does that to people posting on anonymous bulletin boards. I've done similar things myself.
For a reputable investigative journalist to make the same argument, it goes beyond lame. It is at the very least an example of reckless, willful, unprofessional, career-ending negligence. It is positively surreal how Rather thought he could produce such documents and then place the burden of disproof on his critics. Journalism simply does not work that way. It's preposterous. Bush is probably President today thanks to the bizarre antics of Rather and his cohorts.
By the way, the proportionally-spaced, perfectly-centered typography is far from the only reason to think these documents are crude modern forgeries. Content analysis shows dozens of reasons they could not conceivably have been written by a Texas Air National Guard officer at the purported time and place, but in all likelihood were forged by an Army National Guard officer unfamiliar with the differing terminology of another branch of service. Bill Burkett, take a bow.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I think every previous response to this statement assumed that the anonymous poster seriously meant what he said.
C'mon, people. Use your noodles. This is obvious sarcasm. There have been no small-government Republicans on the national stage since Barry Goldwater.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
"THere is no appreciable difference between "there are trees but we can't get to them" and "there are no trees""
How sad. Really, that's just embarassing for you.
Ok guy, I can see what you're about. You're one of those pricks who decides when he's proven wrong that he needs to spin it somehow. Guess what?
It's not ether of the things you try to say it is, it's actually
"We have tons of trees, we just value them enough that importing them from other places is cheaper"
More importantly, you didn't say either of those things in your original post, you said this
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not (sic) having to import every square inch of wood."
And that's a fucking lie. They didn't eat through ANY of their tree population, it's just cheaper to get it elsewhere. READ THAT. C-H-E-A-P-E-R. If they wanted to harvest their own lumber, it's perfectly possible, it's just more expensive.
You were wrong, then you followed up with something even more ridiculous. One more and you make the Slashdot troll hat-trick.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Wisdom from the Native Americans, my ass. It was written by a white guy named Ted Perry in 1970.
Did you scroll down to the bottom of the page, where the author noted that "I have found that the text above is not historically accurate, nor even something that Chief Seattle said. I am not going to change the text above because of its impact"?
In other words, Ward Churchill meets Dan Rather. Who cares if it's authentic; let's just keep it out there for its "impact". Feelings and intentions always trump reality in the Red-Green cloud-cuckoo land.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If only their heart were so pure.
Eight hundred thousand years ago, Yosemite Valley was filled with glaciers a mile thick.
They melted before Man had learned to tame fire.
So why should I care about a few tiny glaciers in Montana? Glaciers are always going to be getting either bigger or smaller. Right now they are getting smaller. Big fucking deal.
It's the people who think the Earth is a steady state system, always has been and always should be, who are the real morons in the global warming debate.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
If it is true that the polar ice caps of Mars are shrinking, does that mean it too has "Global Warming"?
More specifically: Does that mean man is responsible for "Global Warming" on Mars?
If not, then the Sun is.
That being said, if the preceeding is true, then neither is man responsible for any "Global Warming" here on Earth and it doesn't matter what this "imminent (sic) scientist" thinks or suggests concerning man's cause or solution thereto.
I noticed this in the write-up for TFA,
Could this have been done by the censors in the Bush Administration ? An attempt at humour, maybe ? Or (Lord, help us) an attempt at subtlety ?It seems to me that this eminent scientist (he speaks for the NASA, after all), might want to sue somebody. He might hold that an imminent scientist is a fellow who is about to become a scientist - about to obtain his first diploma, that is. In short an eminent scientist is an authoritative voice by virtue of qualification and experience, while an imminent scientist is just a wannabe. There must be grounds to sue here.
Of course, the administration would find a way to put the fault on the Slashdot editors . Who knows, though, if they got sued it might make them drink less and work more - you never know.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Okay... so what would that prove, exactly? That many humans standing about a foot apart is completely meaningless... the people in the center would starve long before the ones on the outside lined up. Hell, that many oxygen-consuming entities in such close proximity, I could see them giving off such a huge amount of hydrogen and waste gasses that the people in the center of the state asphyxiate. Now, if you want to talk about densities that have some chance of being livable, accounting for space to grow food, cope with waste, dispose of byproducts of our current lifestyles, and everything else that goes with civilization, please do. Without that, this is useless.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
This should be obvious to anybody who has read the commentary here for more than five minutes.
Note that this is not confined to politics; MS-Windows vs Linux vs BSD vs OSX debates also result in various posts waxing vitriolic about opponents' "toolness", as do debates about vi vs emacs, the extent to which copyrights and patents should apply to various media, software, etc., and so forth.
Everything is black-and-white to most people, including most people who post here.
Very few people see the shades of gray, as that would require thinking, and most people (especially Americans and fundamentalists) don't like to think.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Yeah, some guy I know pointed out the folly of expression an opinion of something even tangentially related to politics would bring out the lamest of the lame.
How silly of me.
Thanks.
By the way, Windows is always better than Linux will ever be, vi and emacs will never hold a candle to edlin, copyrights should persist until the heat death of the universe and you should be able to patent movie plots.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
(I could probably upgrade to MS-Windows 98 if I wanted, but that would mean putting money in Bill Gate's pocket, which I am loathe to do.
Also, I can't add more memory, because nobody sells the kind that I need any more.)
OTOH, I can boot up the latest version of Slackware Linux (2.2) with no problems at all (except for slow multimedia, which is one of the reasons that I still dual-boot with MS-Windows 95).
I usually run KDE on two X servers as two different users: one for online use, which helps isolate the rest of the system from potential attack, and one for getting real work done.
Try doing that with even the most recent version of MS-Windows!I am not familiar with edlin, but it sounds like a line editor, in which case the "ex" mode of vi(m) should work fine.
However, my favorite line editor is TECO (although the last time that I used it was about 30 years ago).
Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, my humor/sarcasm detector is on the blink.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
OK, checked and they were right, here's another example..
If everyone in the world moved to the US state of Texas, the population density per square mile would be 20,705, or almost the same as Paris (20,185) or Toronto (20,420).
"As for "millions of years of evolution"... hell yes, it would wire us to do the opposite of what's beneficial. Humanity hasn't spent any meaningful amount of time on an evolutionary scale as a global organism"
Population Ecology applies to ALL animals, it's not human specific.
Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain, and most fools do. - Benjamin Franklin
Thank you, I was going to point out that according to Thomas Malthus' explanation of carrying capacity, a species does not ease up comfortably to the carrying capacity as a limit graph would show; the species will grossly overshoot the carying capacity of the environment it lives in, and will die off rapidly, dip under the carying capacity, flourish, and overshoot it again. The real graph depiction is something approaching an oscilating sine wave, where as time increases, the modulation decreases, but is ever present.
That's what we're steaming head on for.
It's thanks to the works of people like Norman Borlaug that we are even where we are today. A supremely intelligent geneticist, he actually had the conviction in his ideas to step out of the comfort of a lab and move his family to mexico, where he doubled wheat production of the country in just a few years. He did it again in India, and again with rice production in Asia.
In Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, Borlaug refutes the claims of green activists who claim that genetically engineered crops are going to ruin the world and poison the food. He says that's easy to say when you're not hungry, but without GE crops, we've only got enough food to feed 4 billion people, and I don't see 2 billion volunteers to dissappear. And he's right - If we're going to have the population, we're going to have to feed them. It's estimated by some that Norman Borlaug has saved the lives of over a billion (carl sagan with a "B" billion) people. Greatest human being ever, indeed.
~Will
sig?
edlin was the line editor that shipped with DOS back in the day. It made vi look like emacs. I almost mentioned TECO, which I think I used about 20 years ago, but I might be confusing it with something else. EDT on VMS wasn't too bad, given what I was used to at the time.
Can you believe that guy is still trolling me (or that I am stupidly responding)? The sheer amount and degree of that guy's doublethink is staggering. It's like the Marlboro Man ridiculing someone for smoking who has never touched a cigarette. How can people reall be like that without collapsing into a singularity of stupidity?
BTW, if you want to upgrade Windows, I would recommend getting a copy of Windows 2000. While it's game compatibility isn't great for old Windows games (W9x), it is pretty much a completely different OS and will run reasonably well on your hardware. Of course you are still feeding the Beast, but least you are buying something worth the money. Of course actually _buying_ Windows 2000 (or 98, etc) could be a challenge since MS has pretty much abandoned it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The last is the most important. We all should want the USPS to be responsible to its charter, not the president.
They work if you set your referer to http://www.crooksandliars.com/ i.e. with wget --referer
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
"Look all you have to say is "Japan can sustain it's present population sustainably" and prove it then I will be wrong."
Even more sad. When it's demonstrated to you that you've mad a mistake, you reply by changing the subject.
Nowhere did I say anything about Japan sustaining anyhting. I never even alluded to it. So knock that stupid shit off.
You made a factually incorrect statement, then based your entire argument on it. I gave you proof you were wrong, there's far more available for you to find on your own, yet you continue to troll.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous your childish attempts are?
"Sorry."
I'm sure your parents are too, but they're not responsible for the embarassment to them that you've become. No, that's all you and your pathetic attempts to save face after making a factually incorrect statement and then INSISTING you were right about it, despite all evidence being against you.
All YOU have to do is not change the subject, not try to change your argument, and prove that this statement
"Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood."
is correct. Until then, you're yet another slashtroll who thinks appearing right on a webboard is more important than actually knowing the facts. And I'm right.
Really, yours is the most unseemly and pathetic attempt at equivocation I've ever seen. One day, when you grow up, you'll see how ridiculous your statements are.
Until then, your a fucking troll. And the worst part for you? You know it's true, and you can't do anything about it.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
All of malthus's predictions were wrong though. So were Paul Erlich's. You can claim that their basic ideas hold and that they were just wrong on the time frame, but their consistent failure indicates an error somewhere. I think Julain Simon may have correctly identified the issue. I may have misread what little I've seen about his theories, but I believe the idea is that the doomsday models treat people as pure consumers without considering their benefits as a resource as well.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari