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Unfriendly Climate Greets Gore At Apple Meeting
theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."
Al Gore must melt the glaciers to retain his position on Apple's board
Sounds about as relevant as this news article.
Hey wait, there's a whale in trouble, I've gotta get out of here and save her!
Well, at least the shareholders aren't buying into "sustainability" scam.
Leave your mother out of this.
You're practically begging the denialists to come out and play. ...oh, it's a kdawson article. Carry on, then.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Clearly, Apple is trying to get rid of Linux as a competitor by melting the homes of penguins everywhere. Of course, they're not taking BSD into account...
How do i mod the whole article -1 flamebait?
sure, i don't, at least i don't consider them especially evil. did you have a point at all?
Long live the BSD license
Another lie perpetuated by his haters
We get loudmouthed know-nothings like Shelton Ehrlich at our homeowner association meetings. All they do is make a lot of noise and annoy everyone else. If our loudmouths started ranting about global-warming at our HOA meetings instead of complaining about leaf-blowers and such, they'd probably get front-page coverage too. But for the sake of my neighbors, I won't tell *them* that.
Correction: The quote as that he "took the initiative in creating the internet". And that is correct, at least as far as the internet as we know it today.
Creating != Inventing.
Carry on.
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
Wow, and I thought that horse was dead, beaten, cremated and recycled into cinder blocks already. Hell, even Newt Gingrich admitted Gore's role in advancing the technology: http://mediamatters.org/items/200705230008
I think Al Gore is a pretty cool guy. He saves the environment and doesn't afraid of anything.
One of the biggest disservices we can do to the cause is to talk of doom scenarios. The planet isn't heading for doom, nor are we, even if there was a 5-10C temperature increase.
The economy might be fucked and hunger might kill of large portions of the human race... But that's not the same as being doomed.
- These characters were randomly selected.
That's Japanese for "Attack! Attack! Attack!" and it seems to be the mantra of the right. No, not the right, there are smart right-wingers who actually acknowledge that there are real environmental problems we can't ignore. After all, doesn't conservativism have some connection with conservation?
Let's call them the Lazy Right. Coming up with arguments is too much work, so all they want to talk about is how stupid and evil liberals are. If you cite evidence that glaciers are receding, they'll tell you Al Gore can't keep his facts straight. Suggest that GWB's anti-terror strategy is a disaster, and they'll respond with some nonsense about Barack Obama's real name. I once posted a comment on Amazon casting doubt on the whole EMP peril thing, and somebody who disagreed with me said "The only thing you've proven to me is that there really are dire consequences to having hyper-obsequious mothers who breast feed their children until they're 11."
Come one people. Maybe you're right, and we're wrong. But you'll never know until you give up all the stupid trolling and start having a real argument.
And yes, I know, there are liberals that do it too. I don't think they're in charge of the left. And even if they are, how does that justify responding in kind?
Wow, apple stockholders must be really dumb.
Because, seriously? Al Gore's movie came out like a couple years ago, and global climate change isn't something that you're going to see happening in dramatic fashion in a couple years. How is that not common knowledge?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
So could I paraphrase you as, "F*** Al Gore: Because We're Not *All* Going To Die" ?
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
One one side you have people who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.
On the other side you have... those who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.
Science got way lost in the middle of this whole debate. Indeed the very term "debate" is laughable, as it is currently a which hunt on both sides.
And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book. I know this is no small thing, especially in the context of a global economy and global competition, but the consequences of ignoring things if man-made climate change is a reality are bad.
Flame me unbelievers, but not too much lest you warm the planet :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Oh, right - it's slashdot. Where no one reads TFA and everyone thinks "the Market will fix it". Like Magic.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
That's completely untrue. Read Dawkins' new book for a good discussion of why geographical distribution and gene frequency are more than enough proof to support evolution, even if we had never found a single fossil.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Create, definition 1: "to cause to come into being, as something unique that would not naturally evolve or that is not made by ordinary processes."
Invent, definition 1: "to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity, experimentation, or contrivance: to invent the telegraph."
Clear?
Next we'll be having to debate the definition of "is". :P The "Gore Bill" turned ARPANET into the internet. Feel free to hate the guy, but he deserves credit for this.
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
I don't understand the mocking and hostility of the opponents of climate-change theory toward the supporters.
Pretty simple, the naturally human instinct is payback for years of mockery. And indeed why should only one side be allowed vitrol and mockery and demand it not be turned against them when the tide of fate ebbs for them?
I don't think it's productive but it's understandable, and honestly well deserved.
Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book. I know this is no small thing, especially in the context of a global economy and global competition, but the consequences of ignoring things if man-made climate change is a reality are bad.
Do you believe in God? Because you have just stated you must. After all, the consequence for being wrong is fairly horrific since a lifetime here is nothing compared to an infinity of afterlife, right?
Such is the power of the Precautionary Principal which is what your argument relies upon.
Here is what I know from years of traveling the world. If you want to see true devastation, you have only to travel to where people are generally poor. It's hard to save a forest when millions are looking for firewood (see: Haiti).
So you claim we should look upon hurting people in an economic downturn as a small consequence to avert potential disaster, but all I can envision is a global environmental cataclysm as economies fall and people do what they do best - survive at any cost.
Far better to invest heavily in alternative energy now, like nuclear and solar, so that we can all get off the oil train. The chances of GW actually causing enough problems to really bother us all before we can make that happen are to my mind exceedingly low vs. the certainty of what happens when we make a whole lot of people poor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you cite evidence that glaciers are receding, they'll tell you Al Gore can't keep his facts straight. Suggest that GWB's anti-terror strategy is a disaster, and they'll respond with some nonsense about Barack Obama's real name.
Why is it not equally lazy to paint all "right wingers" as Birthers, and people who cannot argue with science even though there are tons of carefully thought out articles from real scientists questioning AGW - in many aspects turning out to be right in doing so? Those who questioned "glaciers melting before 2035" were laughed at as loons before and told the science was carefully studied, when it turned out it was not. Why can YOU not believe there are and can be scientists who do not agree with the current AGW theories?
Your whole post frankly struck me as full of such lazy stereotyping, with no effort on your part made to understand the reasoning behind those who do not buy into the same group-think you do.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wow, slashdot commenters must be really dumb.
Because, seriously? There are nine hundred and some million shares of Apple stock on the market, and extrapolating from a single loudmouthed shareholder, who was voted down on the issue in question no less, to the views of all of the thousands of others is completely unjustifiable. How is that not common sense?
"No Chicken Little, the sky is not really falling"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One comment by a single share holder doesn't set a "tone". I've seen videos of the meeting, and you always have share holders like this. Not only that, but this same person was widely booed by other share holders as he ranted against Al Gore.
No matter what you do. No matter what you believe, in 4 billion years the sun is going to go Red Giant, and swallow the earth whole. It doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not.
In essence we will be the only thing that remains of it.
It doesn't matter if you believe that we are 'in charge' of the earth because of God making us so, of if you believe that we are just part of nature (even if some believe we are a very destructive part and that this has to change).
In 4 billion years it will all be gone.
Now currently we are the only species that has the capability to survive this event by creating technology that will allow us to 'colonize' other planets and have our species survive. If we get to that point (if we don't blow-up/burn/freeze ourselves first) then I'm sure we will do a "Noah's ark/Titan AE" kind-of-thing, but no-matter what - it will still be for us, about us, and created by us.
I don't know if Global warming is real. I don't know if Gore believes in it because he cares about the world or if he just has alot of money invested in green technologies. But I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. And although I view myself as 'agnostic' when it comes to global warming, I do like the idea that Apple products will be as green as possible.
Yeah. Funny how, when lies like that are called out, so often the fallback is "I was just kidding!" The trouble is, the "joke" perpetuates a false notion. Funny or not, it's not true, it's not fair and it really needs to stop.
Kythe
People are generally unethical baboons. Investors and shareholders are 2^N times more unethical and are less than just baboons.
...that Al Gore uses a mac? Is he a board member at Starbucks too?
The only problem is that no politician, no media outlet and the vast majority of the public isn't interested in phrases like "there is a 70% chance that global yearly average temperatures will increase between 1c and 2C in the next 50years (numbers subject to change as models and data is refined)". IF you want people's attention, you gotta talk about all polar bears dying in the next 10 years. Sad, but true.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You do realize, don't you, that a warmer climate leads to longer growing seasons and that leads to more food?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
AIDS doesn't count anymore?
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Wind will obviously become cause effective eventually because manufacturing wind turbines need not be any more expensive than manufacturing cars. Solar is rapidly improving too. Nuclear was never made safe because producing nuclear bombs was the technological priority.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Random straw man example: the "glaciers aren't melting" comment.
It's all well and good to point out the realities behind glacial melting. But it misses the more fundamental problem with the glacial quote - the 2035 claim was treated in the past by prominent figures of AGW as studied science, as an incontrovertible fact.
So the reality that in fact the quote came from one off the cuff comment, when people were once called "deniers" before for questioning it - well that begs the question, what else are people called "deniers" about now that is equally wrong? Do you see the real problem? Even stuff that is well studied, that has good results - that ceases to matter. It doesn't matter if there is a wolf when there wasn't one before the other times you claimed there was one.
And that's the real trouble, that now you have to question and double check EVERYTHING because no-one can be trusted at this point. That's exactly why scientists need to be careful publishing results and not dive willingly into the hands of politicians, no matter how well meaning they may seem. No matter that it might be somewhat harder to get funding if you are not willing to back outlandish claims.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
wasn't their an international report of some kind that stated the sea ice would be gone by 2035? oops...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You need a dictionary.
And ...
The Internet today is pretty much identical in everyway to the Internet I used before anyone knew who Al Gore was.
The difference today is more spam and more shitty businesses that I'd really rather not exist.
Please enlighten me as to what Mr Gore actually did other than using a group of networks that were already about to explode into the public as a political battle cry.
If you think Al Gore did anything special for the Internet, you weren't doing much on the Internet back then.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
it reminds me of how religous people claim god controls everything and is all knowing and loving, but when something bad happens it's our fault or the devils fault...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The Internet today is pretty much identical in everyway to the Internet I used before anyone knew who Al Gore was.
You used ARPANET? You browsed www before Mosaic?
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
In the US, people are nice to each other and the fact that people are entitled to their own opinion is taken very far. In my country, people are blunt and tell you if you're wrong (and why). If you live in a country where myths like creation are vigorously propagated, discussion about it is discouraged and ignoring facts is encouraged, isn't the US at a natural disadvantage when it comes to discussing factual issues? People can only too easily mistake their opinion for true/a fact, and not as something that may be in for a rewrite. This is exacerbated by the drive of the more outspoken (conservative, if I may say so) people to push their thoughts on others. We have (a minority of) creationists in our country too. We let them keep their thoughts and they don't bother us with theirs.
After years on slashdot, I still am often taken aback by lines of reasoning that boil down to: xyz is expensive, so phenomenon pqr does (not) exist). Uh, gulp. In this specific case of global warming: What can possibly be wrong with taking a couple of measures that make the initial cost go up and the cost of use go down. You pay the same (in the end), but do longer with a resource. Some allergy that the state could come up with a sensible idea is enough to throw some people into fits (look at the signature lines of several posters here on slashdot). There isn't a law of nature that says that *everything* a government proposes is wrong.
Saving energy can be so easy. For some homes: Take taking a shower. The water that drains is still warm. You can buy a counter-current heat exchanger that recuperates about 40% of the heat (you have to have a mixing shower faucet, or whatever it is called, to use this). You have the same comfortable showers, except that you use less energy. The important difference is that the initial outlay is higher (but your energy bill is lower). The unborn can't bid with you for that energy. Do you really have the liberty to waste it, our is it OK if a government looking further than the next election says: Hm, we're going to introduce some bills to encourage you to reconsider wasting that energy.
Bert
even if there was a 5-10C temperature increase, the economy might be fucked and hunger might kill of large portions of the human race... But that's not the same as being doomed.
It is if you're among the "large portions" that are killed.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Revelations 11:18 (KJV) - And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.
Despite its title, the article references a number of other goings in Apple's shareholder meeting. One passage that stood out to me concerned a number of exchanges Steve Jobs had with shareholders regarding what to do with Apple's substantial cash reserves. Proposals ranged from distributing the spoils as dividends to shareholders to investing in the Tesla motor company. FTA:
To that [last proposal], Jobs replied he was planning on throwing "a toga party" with the money instead.
Then turning more serious, he argued--convincingly, IMO--that a company like Apple that takes risks needs the safety net of cash in the bank. This next comment by him, however--if I'm not reading it out of context--is plainly a gaffe:
Jobs also rejected the idea of giving stockowners more of that cash through dividends because, he said, he believed the stock price, currently at $201.60 a share, would be unaffected either way. He asked one shareholder, "Would you rather be a company with our same stock price and $40 billion in cash, or a company with the same stock price and no cash?"
Given his two hypothetical choices, if the stock price isn't going to change, any investor would prefer the one with a cash distribution. (To the shareholder, it would be an example of unlocking value.) Conversely, for any officer of the company, it is preferable to be sitting on a $40B cash hoard. So when Jobs presented that false hypothetical dichotomy, he forgot he was addressing shareholders and not Apple insiders, and instead presented a glimpse of his conflicted interests.
Yes, the WG2 team screwed up there. On about two sentences of one page of a thousand page report
Yes and then the head of the IPCC proceeded to widely publicize this one screw-up as factual beforehand, magnifying the problem a thousandfold. Normally one mistake in the middle of a huge document would not matter - but in the end it did matter because of how they used this without double-checking. If you are going to tell heads of state how to act based on some data it doesn't matter how much of a 3000 page report is correct, you better make DAMN SURE the small part of data you are feeding them is. The fact they did not, for years, with people questioning them - that again is the real problem. These days climate "scientists" are looking very Nixonian in that they claim there is no problem when mistake after embarrassing mistake keeps coming to light.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I thought we weren't supposed to feed the Editrolls?
[UID-HeinzIntel]
The reason it is BS is because more gasoline has been used to produce the food we ate to power our hands and brains will typing this post (gasoline is consumed to produce food). Sure, some conservation is smart - higher value insulation, draft guards, etc. This will reduce the price of energy use. However, conservation cannot reduce the amount of energy used. IT CANNOT. Here's why it cannot: Jevon's paradox. I am a proud American, but I am not fascinated by one thing. I am only interested in efforts that actually produce results.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
I understand that the energy interests are buying scientists who deny that human activity is causing climate change. Changing technology would hurt or destroy their profit centers.
But what is the government's incentive again?
Blar.
Having attended fairly recent conservative political meeting I'd say you're dead wrong about this unless democrats rail against healthcare "socialism."
Well libertarians are economically closer to the political right which is what I was getting at here. Although technically libertarians don't really fall on either end of the political scale very well hence why it is often split into the economic and social components of political ideology.
Quite a large conceptual leap there, you made from AGW to "phenomenon" which I am betting you imply as some degree of climate warming. The two are totally separate issues, and the arguments about what to DO even if AGW is true is another still.
I said phenomenon because the major sticking point is what to do about AGW. There are people who agree that we are responsible for AGW but also believe that the proposed solutions suck.
Some data used in models is from sources that require a NDA and can not legally be released.
Except that the anti-AGW crowd wasn't paying any attention here. They made sure to cherry pick a few lines here and there but failed to follow up with actual reading. Turns out that after 1960 the tree ring proxies diverged from temperature readings and virtually every other proxy in use. The tree ring data indicated a decline where otherwise none existed.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
You had a very cold day in winter in fly-over country (you're welcome for all the free Federal spending you get at my expense) which totally proves that humans aren't affecting the climate.
With logic like that, I wouldn't hire you to blow the dust out of my servers. You'd probably stick your dick in the fan.
Blar.
Given his two hypothetical choices, if the stock price isn't going to change, any investor would prefer the one with a cash distribution.
Not one with any sense.
I'm a stockholder, and I'd far rather them conserve the cash.
The simple truth is that someday, Apple will have a bad cycle - either the economy, or bad product moves, or Jobs dies, or whatever. All businesses do.
When that day comes I, as a shareholder, want Apple to be able to weather the storm and not be forced to either sell out to another company OR to "hunker down" and being more conservative with products. I want Apple to be able to get back on its feet with its own resources.
It's the same reason that people should try to have savings equal to about a year of salary on hand.
For short-term stock holders what you say might be true but I don't think it pays off long-term to heed their desires.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can buy a counter-current heat exchanger that recuperates about 40% of the heat (you have to have a mixing shower faucet, or whatever it is called, to use this). You have the same comfortable showers, except that you use less energy.
In the end I am doubtful if this is true.
Sure you use somewhat less energy in heating water. But you had to use energy creating that device. You had to expend energy installing it, and you also have to expend energy on potential repairs for introducing complexity into a system that had none. And what about the loss of heat from additional plumbing needed to route water to and out of the exchanger?
In the end it seems like a focused effort to try and take a minute off your shower every day would save far less. Basically nothing is as simple as you make it out to be when you are talking about energy, everything has a lot more complexity when you look into details and there are many paths to try and reduce energy use that are equally valid.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you want to have an opinion on the topic do some research, don't listen to the vacuum heads on tv - 99 of the channels are only after ratings.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Do you have a refrigerator in your house?
You know that it generates net heat, right?
Making it hotter made some places colder.
The global climate is a complex system. Adding (or removing) energy to the system has complex effects.
More to the GPs point, it changes WHAT can grow in certain areas, and the newly growable recently-arctic regions tend to have shitty, shitty soil. While the places with the best growth potential today go over their heat capactiy.
Yeah, nuclear can be safe. France is safer because it shutdown SuperPhoenix, the (explosive) liquid metal fast breeder with leaks. Helium based advanced reactors seem more interesting.
Well said.
Either you are joking, or don't understand the difference between "weather" and "climate".
Hint: What you experienced was "weather".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Remember for how long the tobacco industry denied that their was a health risk to smoking? Oh they were so happy to point out all the old people who smoked and still had gotten old, surely that proved how wrong all the scientist were and that there scientist who got their paycheck from them were right.
Or car safety. No sir, seatbelts kill people.
Look at Mythbusters, just how many stupid myths people want them to investigate over and over because they just want to believe some silly idea. Using a net in your pickup truck to safe fuel... IF that is going work, it only works in an empty truck AND one that doesn't need the door... so why have you got a pickup truck then? You drive a three ton vehicle with huge wasted space and worry about saving a few nickels.
One simple example of how denialists think, is that they have leaped on "global warming" rather then "global climate change". It is easier, anytime it snows you can shout "see, the world ain't getting warmer". Climate change is harder to debunk because ordinary farmers can tell you about it. Just a few more days of rain, or less can ruin a crop. And our western society isn't based on our universities, it is based on our farms. Farms that put plenty of food in our bellies, so much that very clever people can think very clever ideas and still think milk comes from a carton. The more intelligent a creature the less time it spends hunting for food == the less time hunting for food, the more intelligent you can become.
But what if the climate does happen to change? It could radically shift were what types of food can be grown. You might think grain is just about putting a seed in the ground and coming back half a year later to mow it, but it is a delicate process. A frost at the wrong time, not enough rain at some point, to much at another, can ruin the crop.
Right now, in the west we are incredible luck. A man can feed himself well for an entire day with about ONE hour of work, even on low pay. Say that prices double, what effect would that have on our society? Less money to spend on education, less money on healthcare. Less money to spend on taxes to fund the country as a whole.
People can understand that if the planet had just a slightly different orbit it would be a desolate place like mars or venus. But they don't understand that those two weeks of warm dry weather in fall are more then just a nice end to the summer, they are the time farmers need to make hay. No hay, no cheap cattle food for the winter, means that other places must grow the food that costs more and can't grow human food.
But hey, as long as you can drive your 3 ton pickup truck that never picks anything up, you can deny all you want. Just like a smoker with only 1 lung left and no larynx denies that there is anything wrong with smoking.
And really, the entire problem is just as with smoking, by the time we got the absolute evidence (you died from a tar lung) it really is to late.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Remember the ep where Fry met a stockbroker or something from his own time, and they had a shareholder meeting? Well, they really are like that. In fact, they are worse, but nobody would believe a comedy show that showed real stockholders.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Your advice is bad. If people don't know the issue and don't have an opinion, they definitely should not vote. People who vote just because 'everyone should vote' are nothing but spoilers for third parties. They are tools to keep the status quo. Who do you think these people vote for? I can tell you. They vote for the names they hear the most that they have been told are 'legitimate' candidates. What this means is that between the Democrats and Republicans, the uninterested voter becomes a wash. For third parties, every uninterested voter that gets talked into placing their ballot, they have to get that much larger of the percentage of the interested voters.
If you have a race where 10% of the voters are Democrat, 5% are Republican, 20% are independent, and the other 65% are uninterested voters, who do you think will win? Most likely the Democrats with a possible upset by the Republicans if their candidate is particularly good with sound bites. This is why the Democrats and Republicans are so hip on getting uninterested voters out to the polls.
You mean fairy tales like the public letter signed by the presidents of every US scientific organization with any connection to climate research in the nation warning that human induced climate change is a very great danger to the human race just this past October? Or do you mean the fairy tail that 2 studies that were called into question in the last six months have changed the judgement of those same scientists. The human race, at least the US part of it seems to be in a headlong race to win the Darwin award. I just hope I'm dead before it really starts to crash hard and there's mass starvation and general warfare. I don't expect we'll avoid those either. I figure if there are 100 Million human beings by the end of the 21st century we'll be doing pretty well given the direction things are headed.
If you wait until something is commonplace you miss out on a lot.
Just over a decade ago someone at the small university department I was working at managed to produce reliable semiconductor junctions a single atomic layer thick on a tiny budget (not the first to do it), while in the room next door there was a guy with adjustable variable tint window coatings that worked a lot like e-ink. It takes time to iron out the bugs, you can't buy anything at Walmart like those yet but it's still worth hearing about such things long before they get turned into consumer goods or even before anyone goes looking for funding. There was a bit in the press about synrock TWENTY YEARS before it was used commercially to store high grade radioactive waste. I saw a hybrid car built to be used at a mine site in 1987 and scramjets were under development in the same building. Very interesting stuff, but not on the shelves anywhere. It can take years between when something interesting has prototypes and when you can easily get it.
The "where's my flying car now and I don't care what magic makes it work" attitude is actually fueling the bullshit PR releases you are talking about and the frequently increasing number of silicon snake oil scams. It's this bizzare obsession with technology coupled with a hatred of science - as paradoxical as young earth creationists in the oil industry.
You'll NEVER be able to buy the fruit of some new developments at Walmart but that doesn't mean that it isn't useful or interesting enough to be reported. It's depressing that even this site is infested with the "don't tell me if I can't buy it" attitude.
"GLOBAL" temperature is not the same as "LOCAL" temperature, and it's measured across an entire year. Just because we have an unusual cold year in the northern hemisphere, does not say a damn thing about the validity of AGW. Perhaps if we have cold winters for a decade and the summers aren't much warmer than usual, THEN you can draw your conclusions.
Shareholders Care More About Bottom Line Than Environment.
Film at 11.
And after that, can we go through the definition of "sexual intercourse" please? I'm not sure how to use it in a sentence. Maybe we can start there?
Actually Microsoft *did* invent Apple, the same way Al Gore invented the internet.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Not in the least. Isn't it funny how we don't mind laws as long as they're laws we agree with? Isn't it funny how we like the free market unless the free market eats our marketshare? Isn't it funny how you don't mind that companies want government in YOUR life but out of THEIR business?
Actually, that last one wasn't funny at all.
It's horrifying.
No, he did not invent inter-networking, nor is he claiming so. The Gore Bill funded projects of the National Science Foundation, among others, that culminated in the enrichment of the Internet as a medium for economic as well as educational growth, and the mainstream acceptance of the World Wide Web--which eventually turned into the economic engine it is now.
The technical infrastructure and lower level protocols may have remained the same, but the focus and spirit of use has changed considerably.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Clearly you have not seen Al Gore's movie.
What part of Al Gore's movie suggests that we sill see a dramatic change in a couple of years???
I mean...
??????????
I think I smell hyberbole =)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
In what sense has all that coal, gas and oil been free?
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
subj.
However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board.
Even though he's received the shareholder's majority vote, he's expected to lose the Apple electoral college vote.
My general response to those claims is a combination of what you said and the following argument:
Yes, his quote was ambiguous and probably gave a false impression of what he actually did. It was poorly worded and probably misleading. However, he said this in ONE interview and even by looking at the rest of that quote in context, it is clear that he meant something along the lines of "I pushed forward a number of plans and funding proposals which helped to turn the Internet into what it is today." If he repeatedly or directly claimed that he had "invented" or "implemented" the Internet, I would be less sympathetic, but it seems like it was little more than a slightly poorly-worded answer to a single interview question that was blown way out of proportion for purely political reasons.
Government infringes upon too much and the public is too complacent to do anything about it.
Corporations are not people; they are a social virus that like fire which can fuel some growth but also just as readily will burn any number of people without any remorse.
Government defined and enforces the creation of the modern corporation; it is essentially a government entity that is privately managed. Government is a product of the society whether or not it represents its people; now it tends to represent the corporations. This is even worse because all the problems that let people support governments who do evil things (by abstraction/removal from the act) are ALSO the things that happen in corporations (smaller but then they also share the benefits.) But I digress, anyhow your interpretation is false corporations have no freedom, no rights and are fully open to any form of regulation. The very existence of the corporation is by regulation/enforcement.
Its not government telling you that you can't ruin your neighbors resources or your those left for your children it is telling industry it can not do so (or trying to do that) and you simply are a 3rd party "victim" to the results of that. Its another issue altogether about your rights to infringe upon others and how the government acts as the referee (at least conceptually.)
I could argue government is infringing on my right to buy Soylent Green or buy human organs or cheap SLAVE harvested products; but then I might fuel you free market zealots with some new ideas.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Some important points are commonly lost in the climate change debate, not helped by the fact that the loudest voices are as likely to be motivated by ideology as informed by science.
There are few certainties- even the strongest advocates accept the increase by 2050 could be anything from 1 degree (manageable) to 5 degrees (catastrophic). There is definitely a finite probability (in my judgemement- but I'm not a climate scientist- high) that the planet is getting warmer, and also a finite probability (in my judgement less high but still significant) that the effect is man made.
So why don't we just cool it a bit, and see climate change policy for what it is- an exercise in risk management.
I don't think I'm about to wreck my car, and my house probably isn't going to burn down, but I insure both, because either event would hurt me seriously. I apply the classic risk management approach:
concern=probability of occurence * severity of consequence.
How about the same logic to the planet?
You'd think all these right-wing leaders would disregard all polling instead of basing most their actions upon it. Polling is way less accurate but similar to a lot of scientific predictions. Such as long term climate predictions.
The truth is many of them believe the stuff, they just don't care and can make money opposing it (or exploiting it) -- after all, most are LAWYERS and are trained to fight for BS even when in personal disagreement OR they leverage what facts they can to meet the goal --- the goal being to make money by getting the client what they want. The client is supposed to be the voters.... (which is bad enough, since they don't care about their distant neighbors enough either.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Comic Relief at Apple’s Shareholder Meeting article by Chaffin at Mac Observer ... I also wonder if he's the same HP shareholder named Shelton Ehrlich who told a reporter that he didn't think HP's Chairman had done anything wrong by hiring private investigators to spy on company employees.
Some quotes: "Why are we being inundated with policies that have nothing to do with [Apple as a company]?!?! These people are Socialists and want us to be slaves to the government, GOD DAMNIT!"
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Al Gore's 100 ft. houseboat:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gore-hits-the-waves-with-a-massive-new-houseboat/
my boat:
cheap 8 ft. kayak
Yet, he gets to lecture me about carbon usage. Gore is a lightening rod of bad PR for everything he touches. That alone should make the Apple stockholders wary for electing him to the board. Making energy so expensive that the poor cannot afford it, while allowing the wealthy to use as much as they want through "carbon offsets" is one of the most despicable scams ever floated. Mr. Gore, if the planet is in such danger, then lead by example. Put on Gandi's loincloth first before telling the rest of us that we are wearing too much clothing. If we must use less energy, so be it. Then ration it. Then, if I have enough to last all month, Mr. Gore will be in the dark in his freezing cold home for three and a half weeks. By the way, Mr. Gore, the science is not settled simply because you say that it is. The bottom line: 1. don't lecture me 2. Stop trying to take money out of my pocket and putting it in yours.
Sorry, I meant to say "disprove" (instead of prove). Ignore my earlier reply.
No. The extent of snow certainly does not support global warming. If it was increased precipitation only, you wouldn't get snow that far in the South.
If you read the last IPCC report, you will find the hockey stick graph and lots of dire predictions for our future. You certainly won't find predictions of increased snowfall in there. But recently global warming is being used to predict everything ranging from drought to increased snowfall.
Of course the current snowfall record does not disprove global warming either. It merely comes at a politically inconvenient time, when CRU, Penn State University, and the IPCC are being investigated for tampering with the temperature records.
actually, you can spot a "climatologist" the exact same way, they've been generating models to conform to scary weather for over a decade to garner attention to their doomsaying. Greenhouse gasses will cause drought, they said during drought. Greenhouse gasses will cause stronger hurricanes and storms, they said during the year of strong hurricanes and storms. Greenhouse gasses will cause floods, they said during floods.
But some of us have memories, and we see the cooking of the books to conform to weather scares. Even today there are articles (one even by Al Gore in NW Times) saying the huge snowfall this winter is a result of greenhouse gasses. Now one would think after the absurd claims made in his farcical movie, the masses would see through this hypocrite's blatherings as he lives in house with ten times the carbon footprint of normal U.S. citizen, and tools around on a jet blowing more exhaust (from the jet engine, ignoring the hot gas port in the middle of his face for a moment) in a single trip than one of us does in a year.
What this is really about is yet another scam by the elite, who finally have their ducks in a row for "green" technology. They have cap and trade to cause trillions of dollars to change hands, and their markets and funds are ready to go (e.g. Goldman Sachs).
For a site that ostensibly recognizes Science as valuable, Logic & Reason as important, and Technology as powerful tools, /. is often filled with a lot of ignorant, non-curious, offensive and illogical posters. The only exception is we generally like Technology, few Luddites here (of course they would have to be Luddites who owned a computer and knew how to use it, which is rather restricting).
Many many /. posts seem to be made as a result of emotional upset, not to further a reasoned argument. Much moderation is just the same way.
Moderation is thus just as suspect, and its only saving grace is that it should average out to a reasonable result over time.
Whatever the results, the moderation system is far superior to the garbage I see on most forums. Were I to judge Humanity based on forum posts and tweets, I would assume Humanity is too stupid to live.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Al Gore is a Hypocrite.
He talks the talk and demands that we walk the walk.
He pollutes more in a year than my entire family will in our lifetimes.
No, "nearly free". Consider the utterly trivial uses we put energy to and the price per MW/hr for the generator in comparison to how hard it was to do things in the 19th century.
There was ONE fucking article supporting the autism hypothesis, not many. And it has indeed been retracted. And, just like for climate change, the overwhelming majority of specialists had a consensus: vaccine are safe and the cost-benefit ratio is excellent.
Reading your first post I thought you meant their H. Pilori hypothesis had been disproved. I for one never imagined "all ulcers" were caused by a single factor, even after learning of their discovery. It's one of those implicit things, because it's so obvious. Do you mean that theirs is just a minority occurrence? Or are a large proportion of ulcers caused, at least in part, by bacteria?
Almost all the people who opposed Copernicus and Galileo were not, by any stretch of the imagination, scientists. In fact Galileo was probably the only person you could reasonably call a "scientist" in his time. So yeah, there was a consensus.
So vote for the govt to borrow or print money and give it to ppl so they don't have to enter basic survival mode.
When you devalue currency by simply printing more, all that does is screw everyone. See: Zimbabwe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A voice of reason. Thanks. Alas, no mod points to give.
Whether or not you believe that AGW is significantly raising overall GW (which hasn't been concluded), we still have the problem of pollution. I grew up in a very, very polluted area where you were much more likely to develop asthma. I believe that we should work to reduce pollution, including carbon emissions. We can recycle more, develop various renewable resources (solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, etc) WHILE drilling for oil. America's power infrastructure needs to be updated (which will go along nicely with the adding of various renewable energy sources). Along with this, we can cease our involvement in the Middle East (to a degree), saving on "defense" spending and "rebuilding" spending. Our dependence on oil isn't going to dissolve-- we still use oil for manufacturing and energy (which we can reduce). Recycling conserves our resources, reduces pollution, and minimizes landfills (I hear that we have a process of converting trash into energy). Essentially, quit polluting-- to stop pollution. So the next time you're conversing with a "denialist," present my argument to them. I haven't met a single person who disagreed with me. Hell, we can spur growth in the economy (lots of jobs), create a new American industry that doesn't depend on "intellectual property," reduce pollution, save vital resources, save government funds (we can give out loans, not bailouts), reduce our involvement in the Middle East which will undoubtedly halt terrorism (less recruits, less money, less public support). I doubt it will go how it should (AMERICAN POLITICS, FUCK YEAH), but you shouldn't bitch about someone's plan without supporting a better plan.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
I'm not a big fan of Big Al but cut the guy a break. He's a publicist not a scientist. The IPCC is supposed to be the gatekeeper on good science and they dropped the ball, not Gore. Gore and a lot of other well intentioned people have had to bear the brunt of another shoddy UN process.
Wow. "Arrogant" I'd accept, but "Troll"? Slashdot's moderation system truly is broken.
The federal government taxes everyone. In my state, we only see $0.69 of Federal spending for every $1.00 contributed by a citizen in Federal income tax. Most of the central states see more than $1.00 of Federal spending for every dollar they contribute in taxes.
The state and local taxes that I pay make up for the money being taken from my state by the Federal government to pour into pork programs like farm subsidies. Besides, it's not like we can't buy food from other countries.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html
And that's very nice that you've been having lower temps where you live. An interesting data point but it doesn't say really contradict the concept of climate change.
Blar.
Scientists agree about AGW, though. Nothing was thrown out.
On the contrary, models have turned out to work remarkably well.
On the contrary, there are multiple sources of data for climate in the past.
On the contrary, the scientists understand the overall picture very well. That is why they have moved on from discussing whether AGW is happening or not, to study the actual details.
Those "sketchy" things I have seen quoted from the code was either commented out, clearly labeled as what it was, or similar mundane explanations to the claims of the denialist propaganda machinery.
Clever signature text goes here.
The IOP has issued a clarification: "We regret that our submission has been seized upon by some individuals to imply that IOP does not support the scientific evidence that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming.
IOP's position on global warming is clear: the basic science is well established and there is no doubt that climate change is happening and that we should be taking action to address it now. "
You going to be spreading that statement around whatever forums you post on also? After all, you seem to care so strongly about what the IOP has to say, after all.
It may also interest you to know that IOP members weren't made aware of the original statement, and in fact it was a single subcomittee of anonymous individuals who made it in the IOP's name. The Energy subcommittee at that, not the Environmental Physics subcommittee. And does anyone else find the irony delicious that the IOP is refusing to disclose who was on the committee that made the statement while demanding more openness?
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.