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NOAA: Arctic Likely Free Of Summer Ice By 2050 — Possibly Much Sooner
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published research into the shrinking levels of sea ice in the Arctic. They wanted to figure out how long it would take before summer sea ice disappeared entirely. Since there's no perfect model for predicting ice levels, they used three different methods. All three predicted the Arctic would be nearly free of summer sea ice by the middle of the century, and one indicated it could happen as early as 2020. Two of the methods were based on observed sea ice trends. If ice loss proceeds as it has in the past decade, we get the 2020 timeframe. If ice loss events are large, like the 2007 and 2012 events, but happen at random some years, the estimate is pushed back to 2030. The third method uses global climate models to 'predict atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice conditions over time.' This model pushes the timeframe back to 2040 at the earliest, and around 2060 as the median (abstract). One of the study's authors, James Overland, said, "Rapid Arctic sea ice loss is probably the most visible indicator of global climate change; it leads to shifts in ecosystems and economic access, and potentially impacts weather throughout the northern hemisphere. Increased physical understanding of rapid Arctic climate shifts and improved models are needed that give a more detailed picture and timing of what to expect so we can better prepare and adapt to such changes. Early loss of Arctic sea ice gives immediacy to the issue of climate change."
Long-range climate predictions are nearly always wrong, despite their insistence to the contrary, I suspect they may be wrong again.
Or not...
Ken
The only chance (and it's a damned small one) of getting the various political entities motivated to actually do something is for major shifts to happen in a time frame so obvious that even Rush Limbaugh can figure out there is an issue. If the Arctic weather system collapses, pushes the jet stream away and lets Europe freeze ...
Damn it again.
That'll just confuse them even more.
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Do you know how long we've waiting for the Northwest Passage to open up? Finally we will be able to move goods between Europe and Asia in weeks rather than months!
There are other models that are based on solar modulation having to do with orbits and magnetic field strength. According to them, we're going back into the deep freeze 2020-2040, so don't worry about it.
I will be able to water ski from North America to Russia, always wanted to do this.
Professor Wadhams at Cambridge already predicted the collapse by 2015. Here is a reference. This site predicts 2030 at the latest.
Climatology isn't a dart board, you don't make a ton of predictions and then claim you are right when one of them hits. You go back and do further research to understand the climate better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One approach looks only at ice volume measurements, and explicitly ignores theory because the existing theoretical models failed to predict anything like the ice loss that we observed. Using the simplest accelerating-curve-fit, we get first ice free in September 2017, and six months per year ice free by 2025.
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/08/more-on-arctic-sea-ice-volume.html
Predicting sensible weather in the short term is quite different from predicting broad climate trends. And as it happens, short-term weather prediction is actually pretty good these days. Hurricane tracks, for example, have fairly low error rates these days, outside of some exceptional scenarios. In what other field besides astronomy do we have that level of predictive ability and accuracy? Can we predict the economy? Social trends? What Egypt will do in a year? No. But we can predict the weather, regularly, and do a pretty damn good job. So stop shitting on the one field that is actually able to predict the future with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Arctic ice extent is normal. Look at the DATA not the propaganda doomsday soothsayers claims.
"From 1988 until a few years ago, a lot of multi-year ice was getting transported into the North Atlantic during the winter. This caused a large drop in the thickness of the ice. What they don’t want to talk about is that this pattern has reversed. The amount of multi-year ice is increasing since 2008, and during this past winter almost all of it moved west towards the Beaufort Sea, where it will slow summer melt."
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif
"Climate experts tell us that the poles are melting down, which is why global sea ice area is eighth highest on record for the date."
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.global.anom.1979-2008
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
Weather and climate are not the same thing. Just as you can't predict whether a given coin toss will end up heads or tails, but you can pretty accurately predict the results of 50 or 100 or 1000 coin tosses in ensemble.
Second, there isn't a whole of precision in those climate estimates, as they range from 2020 (7 years away) out to 2050 (30 years later).
Climate can change and it will change but predicting these kinds of trends to 2050 with any kind of accuracy is ludicrous at best, since they cannot even predict whats the weather next weekend.
Idiot who can't tell weather from climate gets modded up.
I have a bad feeling about this thread.
trying to stop this, we should be spending it on working out how to deal with the issues.
That's just because you don't understand it. I guess that makes it a subpar analogy, but by no means the worst.
If current trends continue, negative sea ice in 2040, and an entire negative ice cap by around 2080. Next up, negative ice age!
I'd trust climate models a lot more than extrapolation, though both are likely pretty inaccurate; at least the level of inaccuracy is estimated and stated.
It's Slashdot. Despite being a tech and science nerd gathering spot, there's a strange strain of climate change denialism here. Maybe it's because the non-denialists don't bother commenting on these stories any more, leaving the denialists to defecate all over the comment section.
It would require some sort of magic, and magic is even less Christian than science! (You know, unless it's magic told by the Bible or the Pope or something.)
I would be very worried about this prediction. Luckily all the Global Cooling they predicted earlier will cancel the Global Warming out.
The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.
These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.
Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Only climate scientists care about funding and it's clear it's all they care about, to the point that they don't even bother doing real science anymore. Everybody else in the world does things for the right reasons and never worries about funding or PR. And the "skeptics" are only in it to save humanity from the evil climate scientists. They have nothing to gain monetarily or in political capital. Straight from the goodness of their hearts. It's only those zany climate scientists we have to worry about, with their scheme to, uhh, take over the world by, uhh, convincing us to use clean energy sources and, uhh, their zeal to understand an interesting part of the planet. Yeah, those guys are pure evil moneygrubbers, I tell ya.
I've thought one reason to be that computers (both using and manufacturing them) actually contribute to the climate change and we don't want our shiniez taken away from us.
It's single axis of ranking that make it hard to sort out things, and find the signal amid the noise. If there were ways to flag a point of view, for example, you could find things you agree with (or don't) and want to read, and filter out all the rage post crap.
As it's strictly a popularity contest at present... stuff that appeals to the usual crowd self reinforces over time, and you end up with the crowd that stays here.
The current work around is to scatter our attention at a bunch of broken sites, looking for one that better matches our view... and always being disappointed.
We took a look at past average temperatures and plotted the standard deviation and where the last 10 years of temperatures lie. The odds of this being a natural trend basically exceeded the age of the universe.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hardly liberal. If you think that most conservatives like Mr. Limbaugh you live in an especially special place.
No, frakking isn't going to help much of anything except give us a few years before fossil fuel costs really go through the roof. It's not going to help unload the excess carbon from the environment. Natural gas is only marginally 'greener' than coal. Not enough to matter.
Nuclear power is another subject. IF we could do it correctly (better siting, upgrading, monitoring and decomissioning of plants as well as some sort of half reasonable way to deal with waste) it would be fine. Since we seem to be doing none of those things and since even solar and wind are cost comparable to nucs, it's not much of an answer, IMHO.
Kyoto was a bad political joke and had little to do with slowing global warming. It was simply a test of political will and as such, failed.
And yes, if humans, especially those in a 'leadership' position did something other than try to outrace the next guy in terms of carbon consumption it might help. However, the real problem is the several billion people trying to work their way up from dismal poverty to something better and scooping up all sorts of resources in the process. Can't say I blame them, but it is causing enormous, intractable problems.
All in all, Homo Industrialis won't deal with this problem very well. But it will get dealt with. It's just going to be ugly, protracted and scary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
They need those jets to tell us plebs about the crisis. I also enjoy that a solution to stopping climate change is higher taxes.
"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin." --Teddy Roosevelt
Only climate scientists care about funding and it's clear it's all they care about, to the point that they don't even bother doing real science anymore. Everybody else in the world does things for the right reasons and never worries about funding or PR. And the "skeptics" are only in it to save humanity from the evil climate scientists. They have nothing to gain monetarily or in political capital. Straight from the goodness of their hearts. It's only those zany climate scientists we have to worry about, with their scheme to, uhh, take over the world by, uhh, convincing us to use clean energy sources and, uhh, their zeal to understand an interesting part of the planet. Yeah, those guys are pure evil moneygrubbers, I tell ya.
I know you are being ironic, but these kinds of arguments are coming from extremely well-funded big-oil and rightwing (aka corporation friendly) lobbying and opinion-building. Despite their best attempts they struggle to dispute the science using credible scientists (much like creationism) so they discredit it instead. If you watch Fox News you often see this strategy.
I know. Isn't it sad?
Once the ice age is finally completely over, Greenland can once again become a booming botanical powerhouse, as it was 25,000 years ago.
Imagine the possibilities once Greenland becomes arable again.
That's a good line. I like it.
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....) but it is also true in terms of American politics. Climate change is going to require coordinated large scale governmental actions through incentives and regulation. Libertarians don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem
The remarkably strong anti-gun sentiment that dominates nearly every thread that involves anything firearm related doesn't support that slashdot is remarkably conservative.
Arguments I've actually heard:
Evolution denier: You can't trust biologists because they've all been brainwashed by their education.
Global warming denier: You can't trust climatologists because they've all been brainwashed by their education.
Evolution denier: You can't trust biologists because they're all part of a conspiracy to deny the existence of God.
Global warming denier: You can't trust climatologists because they're all part of a conspiracy to bilk the government for research money.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You do understand climate change is being used by politicians as argument for even greater government command-and-control of the economy, don't you? Even though there are plenty of solutions which do not require such; those are ignored because they don't fit with the agenda of politicians.
In this, the scientists are fulfilling their role as "useful idiots".
Secondly, moving inward from the seas over 100-300 years, when few modern buildings last that long anyway, is not the major trouble people think it is. Compare it to slowing the economy such that we lose 10 or 20 years' worth of tech every 100 years.
So after 300 years, we'd be at 2250-ish tech, compared to 2313 tech. Have we saved lives?
Imagine people in the 1713 thinking, thanks to an oracle, that they should do something about climate change. So they did, and the increased command-and-control caused lag. Now you're sitting here in 2013 with 1950-level tech.
Have you saved lives? Something on the order of several hundred million needless dead would suggest a foolish path was followed.
Similarly people in 2300 will think us idiots, us ape-like ignorant slobs with year 2013 level tech, who thought it wise to retard growth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
- Washington Post, 1922
( based on this original: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf )
it's in my head
Anti-firearm tends to correlate with urban more than conservative.
The funny thing is that you refuse to realize this is a business.
The researcher who did the research, has a decent job after likely studying in a pretty specialized field. The researcher has a mortgage, a car loan, maybe a couple of kids in college. The US is in shambles and most average people with a decent education are afraid of the future. Publishing research that reinforces the accepted view and generates headlines results in accolades, continued funding and a job. This is a good thing in this economic environment.
The issue of funding goes up the chain of command, eventually helping to justify the existence of the organization itself and the pensioned jobs of the folks working there.
I don't really care about joe research scientist and sensationalist science in general - but I do find it entertaining so many people refuse to take a critical look at.
Real problems are things like irreversible pollution, fracking, the dangers of using surplus warhead material in nuclear plants, etc. But its not as sexy.
You pick the year, they pick the theory. This year next year every years a winner. So basically they dont know and need more funding to narrow it down. Maybe next go round it will be odd numbered years, 2025, 2035, 2045.
Change evolution for adaptation and natural selection, is not that evolution means improvement (as in faster, smarter, more complex, etc), just that what results is more adapted for the new environment, or the rough stages going toward it. If the change is fast enough, wont be a lot of margin for adaptation, and could result in few enough survivors that could end in full extintion. it almost happened to us 70k years ago with the Toba supereruption when we wen't down to around 15000 humans.
And how far back did your past data go?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Climate change is going to require coordinated large scale governmental actions through incentives and regulation.
That won't do much cause the problem is more complicated than that. Why do people deny or ignore climate change? Because their lives depend on polluting and impacting the environment. Why can't people live without polluting? Because they need to eat, but most people aren't in a position to grow food, so they need to make money, and for most, the only way they know how to make money is to build something or provide a service that is mostly unnecessary yet impacts the environment. Worst the current economic models in most countries force people to work at least 40 hours a week to make enough money to eat, even though there's no need for everybody to work that much in order to make enough to eat for everybody. For the pedantic, substitute "eat" by "eat, get clothed, have a shelter and a bit of fun."
In what other field besides astronomy do we have that level of predictive ability and accuracy?
Ballistics.
Seriously, any part of physics that isn't significantly affected by quantum effects yields much more accurate predictions, as does chemistry.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Because they've done such a good job so far.
sheesh.
Except that moving inward from the sea, for many people, will mean that their country will no longer exist. And resolving the causes of climate change requires improving technology, not limiting growth.
This is mainly about energy. We could be switching energy production towards renewables. That's going to take years and short term will boost consumption. But everyone knows it is the right long term approach. We don't need to cut standards of living just incentivize the switch.
And maybe because there are plenty of educated people here who don't drink the Kool Aid like you. If you'd bother to pay attention, there are plenty of scientists, who are uniformly smarter that your sorry ass, who also don't drink the Kool Aid.
Dice rolls can be predicted because unlike weather and climate they are not non-linear chaotic systems.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
How quickly can you say BS?
It's only April, and I'm willing to give this "comment of the year."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Thinking you shouldn't be able to wander into a 7-11 and pick up an AK47 along with your coke and chips isn't being "anti-gun".
The past three universes. Then their records got a little fuzzy.
Well, you already can't do that, so... problem solved.
No, it's not. You only think that because you're not conservative.
Considering that at no time in history could you walk into a 7-11 and purchase an AK47, I'd say that's exactly what you are. The more guns a society has, the lower the crime rate. For liberals who love to argue SCIENCE! FACTS!, you liberals sure do hate the truth about "gun control".
No it's not. Climate change is not just CO2 emissions. All those computer chips, all those plastic bottles need more than energy to make. And no matter how much we recycle, some of the material will pollute the environment, kill the fish, kill the plants... Do we really need a new smartphone every 2 years, do we really need to buy bottled water? Of course not, but someone needed to make money to buy food and they figured the best way is to make smartphones or bottled water and they convinced people that these things are absolutely necessary. And the rest need more money now to buy the unnecessary smartphones and bottled water so they convince others to buy some other unnecessary product or service... that uses a lot more than just energy to produce and impacts the environment.
If you think all it takes is renewable energy and government regulation, you're being extremely naive and severely underestimating the complexity of the problem.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, its pulled out their posterior and when we are talking about basically killing the already half dead economies of most of the western world (Because China and India have already said we can take cap & trade and shove it up our asses and the "ZOMFG invisible hand free trade!" drones will NEVER let you just block trade with them) on numbers supposedly showing you what will happen decades in advance? Yeah I call shenanigans.
Look we ALL want less pollution but to actually achieve that some VERY nasty choices are gonna HAVE to happen. You will HAVE to cut off trade with the third world until they pass environmental laws equal or better than your own, you will HAVE to add trillions to the debt to build the infrastructure to support hybrids, not to mention billions on a "people's car/truck" that would be something like a hybrid diesel/electric so you can wean the country off of fossil fuels onto something like carbon capture diesel, and you will HAVE to get the NIMBYs to STFU and build new nuclear plants because none of our renewable choices will even cover what we use now, much less power even 25% of the cars on the road.
So these are all very hard choices that will have to be made, scams like cap & trade are just reverse robin hood by another name and won't lower greenhouses gases by a single pint, hell if anything they'll RAISE them because it will encourage more factories to be built within countries with lax pollution laws since there is zero penalty for just throwing it on a boat and shipping it to the west. Anyway you slice it people to make a REAL difference...its gonna fucking hurt. If done right it should hurt the rich just as much if not more than the poor (because if you take 100 million from a billionaire he isn't going hungry, take the same percentage from someone on minimum wage and they may end up homeless), it should hurt young and old, its gonna hurt all the way around.
But until you can get rid of the scammers, Al Gore on the left and the oil lobby on the right, and get someone willing to make those hard choices? Well its all fricking moot anyway isn't it?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Climate change is not just CO2 emissions. All those computer chips, all those plastic bottles need more than energy to make.
That's resource depletion not climate change. Our resource discoveries are outpacing our usage. While there are going to be problems that's not high up on the list.
Do we really need a new smartphone every 2 years, do we really need to buy bottled water?
I hate the word need. But having higher bacterial content in the drinking water and drinking bottled water is less environmentally taxing than a clean water system would be. As for a smartphone every 2 years. We have a lot of breakage and they are wearing out. I'd assume this cycle will slow soonish.
I think pollution is a problem. But I don't think it is nearly as complex a problem or as costly a problem as climate change.
I don't think resource depletion is a serious problem.
Nooo...it was because many of us that was for actually FIXING the problem saw the AGW platform hijacked by scammers who don't give a flying fuck about the climate or the planet, they just want to fleece you for themselves and their friends.
You watch me catch hell for pissing on their "dear leader" but Al Gore is the fucking worst of the lot, he actually has the giant brass balls to say farting around in a one man Lear jet or having a fleet of SUVs is CARBON NEUTRAL because he pays HIMSELF from his own little carbon bullshit company, and to top it off it lowers his fucking taxes to boot! That would be like moving money from my left to right pocket and not only demanding you tell me how wonderful i am for doing that but getting to take the money off my taxes for "moving fees". What a fucking scammer!
So many of us have gotten sick of the "don't do as I do, do as I say" and fucking scamming that has become the AGW platform. Its one thing if you have someone like Ed Begley JR who walks the walk and does without himself to make the world a better place, quite another when you have a fat fuck in a limo saying "You fucking peasants better tighten your belts" while he stuffs his fat fucking face. Fuck them, may they all fucking drown in the rising seas.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
what if we "know" the nature of statistics, understood it, and still think it's the wrongest analogy we've seen all day?
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....) but it is also true in terms of American politics. Climate change is going to require coordinated large scale governmental actions through incentives and regulation. Libertarians don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem
It is generally true that the past has too many constituents and the future doesn't have enough.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
If you can't predict the next dice roll, how come the house always wins?
Luckily, that's already illegal.
Just remember, what the anti-gun crowd is all about is banning Ruger Mini-14's with black synthetic stocks as "assault weapons", while, in the same bill, they declare the Ruger Mini-14 with a walnut stock "exempt from being considered an assault weapon".
Frankly, I consider the ignorance of the anti-gunners to be the biggest reason to oppose their positions....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
How many black people are you willing to starve to death to TRY to stop the seas from rising, even though you already know you can't?
Because much of Africa is fed by US agriculture. Agriculture that is 100% dependent on fossil fuels at every step of production. You might not care that the price of rice or flour has quadrupled, but that kills a few hundred million people. Not to mention that you are doing this at the same time that there is an economic depression. You might just start killing American poor.
But hey, as long as you bellyfeel doubleplus good, who cares, right?
It has nothing to do with being libertarian. You are talking about conservatives who like to call themselves libertarian because it is the latest conservative lying doublespeak . They think they are being oppressed because 70% of the country no longer thinks like they do, so now there conservative positions are all about gaining their liberty from the yoke of the evil liberal machine. However, they have no compunction curtailing liberty of everyone beyond a narrow spectrum of issues mostly involving the rich and/or the bigoted. The word you are looking for is fascist.
Fascists don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem.
Is the next real estate bubble.
A modern society would have plenty of warning if a supereruption were to happen again on that scale, and plenty of resources to mitigate the effects (though not all obviously). I'm not saying it wouldn't be disruptive, but it wouldn't push humanity to the brink of extinction.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Wow, the straw man production line is in top form!
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
What about the volcanoes on the Gakkel Ridge. All the warm water held in the Arctic basin should be contributing to some or even most of the loss of Ice.
I have seen data showing the slow increase in Antarctic Ice versus the slow loss in Arctic Ice.
I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
"Endeavour to persevere"
No?
I didn't think so.
Sigh...
Erm the accuracy of predicting a single coin toss is THE SAME as 1000 coin tosses.
Where as climate is a far more complicated system sort of like where the probability of heads is determined by the previous coin flips.
Hrmph, now you're being dense just to hold your side of the debate. Buddy, if you truly believe manufacturing smartphones, plastic bottles et al do nothing more than deplete resources, you're just as much in denial as those others you like to call "conservative."
Seriously, any part of physics that isn't significantly affected by quantum effects yields much more accurate predictions
That is inaccurate. Quantum level predictions are *extremely accurate*. That's how we get chemistry and other things.
Individual events not affected by QM are more predictable, but that does not mean that QM is not predictable. It is just single events that are not predictable at QM level.
What's the difference between single events and overall systems? Kind of like predicting weather vs. climate ;) Think about. We are squabbling over 0.1C temperature changes while individual spots on the planet can fluctuate 80C annually.
What about the volcanoes on the Gakkel Ridge.
The comment I was replying to stated that the decrease in arctic ice thickness "has reversed." That statement is not correct, and I posted a link to the data.
Now you, apparently, are trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain this, other than the trivial hypothesis that since temperatures are increasing, ice is melting.
Fine. Do some back of the envelope calculations, and if you still think that's a viable hypothesis, well, uh, maybe you should get somebody else to check your calculations. Then, if you still think it's plausible, go get your ice model peer reviewed.
...
I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
This majorly pisses me off. I point out data showing that Arctic ice is thinning, and people jump immediately to "he's screaming about the end of the world"! That's a false dichotomy: either carbon dioxide has no effect on climate and everything's fine, or it's the end of the world, no other alternatives.
The planet is warming. This is very well documented. "End of the world"?? Why does everything have to be "it's the end of the world"? It's not the end of the world.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yet we have no idea when hurricanes will occur, how many will occur, where they will occur or how strong they are until they have formed. How is tracking an existing object a prediction?
Why waste your time worrying about the few scammers? It seems like you are just constructing for yourself a reason not to bother at all. If Al Gore is a scammer, then find someone else who isn't and support their work. What does it solve for you to rant and rave about a few loons?
Predicting where a projectile will go is on quite a different level from predicting the behavior of the atmosphere of a planet down to a level as small as a town several days in advance. Tell me, can ballistics predict where the projectile will be in a week?
What are these magical alternative solutions? The only reason we started talking about the government is because the private sector already wasn't doing anything about it, still isn't doing anything about and doesn't look to be doing anything about it in the foreseeable future. If it weren't for massive government subsidies and other incentives and regulations, I doubt we'd see what green tech we do actually have. The free market simply does not care about what will happen in a hundred years, as you astutely point out. But somebody has to or we're fucked. Actually, we're starting to be fucked now, but the changes so far haven't been catastrophic thankfully.
But these aren't strawmen. People actually say these things. In this very thread, I responded to a comment that said that the scientists are only publishing stuff to get more grant money.
No, frakking isn't going to help much of anything except give us a few years before fossil fuel costs really go through the roof.
The U.S. alone has hundreds of years of natural gas reserves.
Natural gas replaces coal power plants, which emit tons (literally) of CO2.
Nuclear power is another subject. IF we could do it correctly
What "if" is there? Even if you run the most leaakingist explodingist mutation causing nuclear reactor ever fired, you still are emitting zero CO2 compared to whatever else was providing energy that the nuclear plant now provides. Is CO2 caused global warming a crisis or not? If you really thought it was you be willing to accept ANY amount of localized pollution in exchange for not having a climate too hot to support life. So we can pretty obvious understand from you and other people's take on this that CO2 is actually of zero concern whatsoever.
Kyoto was a bad political joke and had little to do with slowing global warming.
Yes it did fail, that is not my point. My point was that it had a TARGET of CO2 levels to meet that was supposed to address the problem. The U.S. has met the target, supposedly set by real scientists. If those targets are not good enough, then what IS a target the U.S. should meet and where is THAT target from? Is the target zero? I get the sense the only answer you and other hopelessly unrealistic warming cultists will accept is zero, with the same percentage of scientific backing behind it.
However, the real problem is the several billion people trying to work their way up from dismal poverty
To the environmentalist, it always comes down to somehow mandating a certain portion of the populace must be kept in squalor "for the good of the Earth". Or I guess we could just hitler them (oh no I DIDN'T)!
Disgusting.
But it will get dealt with. It's just going to be ugly, protracted and scary.
It sure will be scary having greater yields in agriculture across the planet! I shiver! Or I would if it were cold anymore, which it isn't what with winter everywhere being a thing of the past (as they were saying about the UK some years ago). Going to pack a bathing suit and visit Europe next January. Or should it be ten Januaries from now? Or 100? Or 1000? I'm a little fuzzy about that exact rate of warming again...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They predict flight paths years ahead with rockets/probes. I believe the biggest problem with weather predictions is you need massive resolution to accurately model the planet, and getting sub meter accuracy on a global scale just isn't financially possible yet.
The time to act on global climate change is now. We shouldn't worry about whether it is man made or not, but instead we should worry about how we can get to the point to where we can change the climate in a ten year time period. Since we can't agree whether CO2 is the problem we have to agee in a diplomatic fashion how to stage it so that action can start at a moments notice. I would suggest that we develop climate altering technology to the point that we are ready for full deployment. In order to do that we need to develop, test deploy, do full end to end cost studies, and prepair the infrastructure necessary to roll out climate altering solutions in a time frame that will allow us to rapidly turn the climate around. Investing in short term solutions like pumping the atmosphere full of volcanic gasses, and long term solutions such as air carbon capture require lots of planning, and testing. We can pay for it with the trillions made from recycling the worlds plastic and the rest of the MSW that we generate and clean up the environment at the same time. That is a no brainer we can all agree on. See my articles on the subject atrawcell.com under the top menu.
How?
The maximum odd is 1.
So unless the universe is less than 1 in age this isn't even remotely possible.
Compare it to slowing the economy such that we lose 10 or 20 years' worth of tech every 100 years.
If the assumption that 'greater government command-and-control' retards economic growth were true, you may have had a point. Your belief that it is true is not enough.
In the real world, the element that slows down progress the most is protectionism by profit-driven oligarchies and monopolies. Imagine how economies around the world would have looked if oil prices hadn't been kept artificially high by the OPEC.
Plus chaos theory. And despite that, we still do a good job.
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....)
I'll bite. What does that have to do with being conservative?
will mean that their country will no longer exist.
I don't care for some odd reason. They can always move the country somewhere else or figure out how to conduct the business of government in the sea, if they really want to keep it. Maybe they could repurpose a cruise liner for that.
Aside from a century of developing green technology alternatives to fossil fuels, what have the Romans^Wmarkets done for us?
It is just single events that are not predictable at QM level.
Yes, and that type of thing is exactly what I was thinking of. Maybe I should have been more specific.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
If the assumption that 'greater government command-and-control' retards economic growth were true, you may have had a point. Your belief that it is true is not enough.
One merely needs to look at actual government command and control systems. The fundamental problem is that even if governments were economically competent, and they aren't, they wouldn't be competent enough to understand the complexity of everyone's needs and desires and somehow magically come up with a near optimal solution to that. Markets work a whole lot better.
In the real world, the element that slows down progress the most is protectionism by profit-driven oligarchies and monopolies. Imagine how economies around the world would have looked if oil prices hadn't been kept artificially high by the OPEC.
Note here that OPEC is a collection of countries, not for profit businesses.
conservatives seek to preserve things as they are it is a resistance to change and progress in the messy way it often occurs in real life. Wayland is a change to Linux. Gnome3/Windows 8 is a change to the desktop paradigm towards an entirely new paradigm based on new hardware.
I was saying that this the computer manifestation of it. The political manifestation is the Republican party.
The reason African countries import food from the US is because it's so heavily subsidized that local farmers can't compete. The massive drop in US farm output that will result from desertification/global warming is the best thing that will ever happen to African countries. They will finally have jobs (in farming) and not have to sell their resources cheap to import food.
Wayland is a change to Linux. Gnome3/Windows 8 is a change to the desktop paradigm towards an entirely new paradigm based on new hardware.
And because "Slashdot" opposes a few changes, it means they oppose change in general? How does that work?
The political manifestation is the Republican party.
Like the Republicans oppose change because it'll lead to sweatshops, union busters, slavery, and social Darwinists wandering the streets?
I said: "If it weren't for massive government subsidies and other incentives and regulations..."
And even with those, it's still generally not profitable. Oil and other fossil fuels run the show.
Spam....
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
And because "Slashdot" opposes a few changes, it means they oppose change in general? How does that work?
First off you are switching from asking what the change meant to disagreeing with the underlying facts. /. is generally, recently, opposed to paradigm changes. I could pick others like the conservatism towards languages. You don't see a lot of /.ers embracing new language paradigms. You don't see them generally embracing new ideas in databases much. If you disagree make a positive case of a general acceptance of change.
Like the Republicans oppose change because it'll lead to sweatshops, union busters, slavery, and social Darwinists wandering the streets?
Are you now arguing the Republicans aren't a conservative party in the classic sense?
In a rider to the a bill to fund the Postal Service, a little know rider was attached.
Having passed, although the Federal Government is still under yet another continuing resolution,
the rider bared any Federal scientist using travel funds to attend national or international conferences.
What is in play is Authoritarianism. Scientists employed by the USA Federal Government are 'worker
bees' and nothing more. As such, 'finding of fact' whether bogus or legitimate can only be issued by
the President of the United States of America. So, the Arctic sea ice 'WILL' disappear by 2030 [roundabout]
and this pronouncement is by the President of the United States of America through his organ of choice,
this being the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Given the track record of NOAA
which by the way was instituted by President Richard M. Nixon, is quite lacking in any significant detail as
to give confidence of the Presidential Proclamation of the demise of the Arctic sea ice for all eternity thereafter
at a sufficiently telegenic berth on the shore of the island of Spitsbergen.
Counter attacks on Authoritarianism governments are most productive relative to Fascist governments.
Sig Hail Sig Hail Sig Hail
I'm seeing a lot of stories about unseasonably cold weather all over the world.
The idea of Global Warming seems rather thin at the moment.
I'm guessing that the centralist planners who want to implement population control measures through BS excuses and fairytales about human controlled environment (for good or bad) just picked the wrong horse in the race. Shoulda said 'glaciation' instead of warming.
It's all crap, and it's not in under our control, and that knowledge is what the elites fear. They know on the gut level that if the 99% thinks the kings and emperors can't pray fast enough to the gods of the sky that we tend to chop their heads off.
Mob rules, and that's why they're all about the population control measures and misdirection. The mob is damned scary when it gets roused and there aren't enough bullets in Texas to stop us all if we stampede.
http://exhibits.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/LP_extinction.html shows a couple of maps of glacial retreat. The past few years are merely the logical continuation of a ice cover retreat that's been going on for the past 18,000 years. Yes, there have been a few speed bumps along the road (e.g. Younger Dryas and Little Ice Age) but the macro trend has been decreasing ice cover for the past 18,000 years.
And 18,000 years ago, the planet's total human population was approx a million people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Antiquity_and_Middle_Ages They weren't running around in CO2-spewing SUV's. So we must agree that the retreat of the icecaps for most of the past 18,000 years was not caused by human civilization. Why is it suddenly humanity's fault today?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
If you can't predict the next dice roll, how come the house always wins?
Assuming you're not just trolling, the answer is "the house always wins on average". Somebody might luck out and Win Big, but enough people don't win at all that the big wins and the small wins are more than cancelled out.
The remarkably strong anti-gun sentiment that dominates nearly every thread
Statistics, please? I see both strong anti-gun and strong pro-gun comments (when I bother to look at all - the SNR is pretty low on most gun discussions - so maybe I just don't look at enough threads).
Hrmph, now you're being dense just to hold your side of the debate. Buddy, if you truly believe manufacturing smartphones, plastic bottles et al do nothing more than deplete resources, you're just as much in denial as those others you like to call "conservative."
Presumably, then, if you're (also? same AC or different?) arguing that "climate change is not just CO2 emissions", what you mean by that is "climate change is emissions of various greenhouse gases, including but not limited to CO2", and are arguing that manufacturing smartphones, plastic bottles et al cause the emission of greenhouse gases other than CO2.
And maybe because there are plenty of educated people here who don't drink the Kool Aid like you. If you'd bother to pay attention, there are plenty of scientists, who are uniformly smarter that your sorry ass, who also don't drink the Kool Aid.
And there are also plenty of smart scientists who do, in your words, "drink the Kool-Aid".
Can we predict the economy?
Yes we can: there will be a crisis
Libertarians don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem
And by the time reality will force them to recognize there is a problem, it will probably be too late to fix it
That would be the equivalent of saying "it will rain at some point". It's not a prediction so much as an observation about the fact that it always rains again somewhere (or, in your example, economies always falter at some point).
I was ironic. But to be serious, there is still some information in my prediction: capitalism is unstable, and crisis do happen. Just like there is a difference when I say "it will rain at some point on earth", and "it will not rain at some point on mercury".
And to prevent the next question: I do not have a crisis-free economical system to propose.
So then you admit that reputable scientists disagree with AGW and at the same time are not shills for this or that industry, etc. eh?
And please, realclimate? A hotbed of political activism and environmental wackos.
Look at the state of the U.S. and for that matter the world's economy. Sucks doesn't it? Misery all around, right?
And it took this kind of downturn to get us to the Kyoto levels which you claim are a joke.
So just think how bad the economy needs to get before we reach your mythical levels of reduction that ARE designed to slow global warming.
Nice, eh?
You will HAVE to cut off trade with the third world until they pass environmental laws equal or better than your own, you will HAVE to add trillions to the debt to build the infrastructure to support hybrids, not to mention billions on a "people's car/truck" that would be something like a hybrid diesel/electric so you can wean the country off of fossil fuels onto something like carbon capture diesel, and you will HAVE to get the NIMBYs to STFU and build new nuclear plants because none of our renewable choices will even cover what we use now, much less power even 25% of the cars on the road.
I'm with you in spirit, but the generally negative tone isn't "productive".
But until you can get rid of the scammers, Al Gore on the left
But Al Gore proposed to do the same thing as you. Except, the plan didn't punish 3rd world countries nearly as much as your plan. It's the same idea, just differences in details.
The US will never get anyone to sign on to the "we poisoned the earth already, so you don't get to" stance. Though my plan would be to do neither. Tax all imports according to a "location scale". Bad labor laws? Tax for you. Bad environmental laws? Tax for you. Use slave/prisoner labor in exports? Tax for you. Tax the "cheat" paths 25% more than the estimated gain from the cheat. You might as well raise your wages to US minimum and pay US minimum health care and vacation, or you'll pay that much anyway in the tax on your widget. Repeat for environment and other issues. Let them make all they want domestically. Let them export to "worse" countries. But to get in the US (and likely the UE if the US adopted this), you must pay tax equal to the lowest standard in the place of sale.
Oh, and you are factually wrong, in that solar could provide 100% of US energy needs. It's just there isn't enough money in it for the established companies, so it's always given bad press. And yes, if solar was 100% of power, we would need to consider nighttime production or storage, but the problems with that are mainly political and cost, not technical.
Learn to love Alaska
Climate can change and it will change but predicting these kinds of trends to 2050 with any kind of accuracy is ludicrous at best, since they cannot even predict whats the weather next weekend.
Again, the above is a perfect example of bullshit, or if you want a more polite term, "poppycock" or "humbug". Quoting from the above link...
Bullshit is commonly used to describe statements made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy, such as goal-oriented statements made in the field of politics or advertising.
"bullshit" can be sometimes be distinguished from lying...
"Bullshit" does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions.
The parent poster seems to implicitly (and deliberately?) confuse climate and weather. There are numerous quality discussions about chaotic systems, the differences between climate and weather, and how climate is predictable farther into the future than weather. The existence of these arguments, and the poster's seeming ignorance of them seems to indicate to me that the poster simply does not care about the truth, but cares rather only to appear to be truthful to those less well-read in science. As such, he falls nicely under Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt's definition of a bullshiter given in his 2005 monograph 'On Bullshit':
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Erm the accuracy of predicting a single coin toss is THE SAME as 1000 coin tosses.
The chance of 1000 tosses being an exact number is much smaller than the chance to guess the next toss. Also, the chance of guessing 1000 tosses within a 5% margin is very high. 5% margin on the next toss is the same as 0% margin, which is why it's easier to guess 1000 than 1. And it is a good analogy for weather. The chance of a single event at a single point of time is X, but the chance of a repeat is more "stable" than any single event.
Learn to love Alaska
What?
A six-digit UID writes this? Are you senile? Slashdot is about as conservative as HuffPo. A foot wide and a millimeter deep.
Just answer anyone with an anti-religion rant and see what happens. It doesn't matter WHAT you answer with.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Nobody has *ever* even suggested taking our shiney. There have been discussions that would lead to higher prices, but those are always shot down by the people who want to save up for their 3rd summer home, 2nd ski villa, or 4th yacht.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't care for some odd reason.
I'm not convinced that it really matters - but the reason is probably because you are a psychopath.
They can always move the country somewhere else or figure out how to conduct the business of government in the sea, if they really want to keep it.
Here's a thought - we could take you stuff and give it to them. That would at least partially alleviate their loss.
Make smartphones tough enough to last 3 years and I'll keep one. I did, My G-1.
Yhe public water system where i live is saddled with minerals that make it taste like bleagh, and chlorine that makes it taste like the pool. I decant RO water every chance I get, and learned that ice reduces the aftertaste, but chilling water for ice is also wasteful.
It's unlikely any flat panel TV will last as long as the XL-100 I had to dispose of because no one could adopt it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Slashdot is about as conservative as HuffPo. A foot wide and a millimeter deep.
You got me on that one. I don't even know how those metaphors mix. One is saying the opposite but strong, and the other is saying not much commitment.
Just answer anyone with an anti-religion rant and see what happens. It doesn't matter WHAT you answer with.
I wouldn't accuse /. of being pro-religion
Because finding an excuse not to care gives him an excuse to do nothing.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Are you THIS fucking stupid, or are you such a flag waver you don't give a fuck if you get assraped as long as they wear the right t-shirt? Read the God damned link the ONLY things that will get passed if you support AGW right now is FUCKING SCAMS, you will do NOTHING, not a God damned thing, to lower carbon by a single fucking pint, ALL YOU WILL DO is make fat fucks like Al Gore rich!
If your idea of "doing something" is giving money to scammers, fuck don't let me stop you, just send all your money to the nearest televangelist and call it a fucking day. Hell you might as well, its the same bullshit, just a different wrapper.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Oh bullshit, solar panels aren't even 50% efficient right now and if you sit down and do the figures without mommy government tilting the scales with tax breaks and other bullshit? It will NEVER break even, it won't. get rid of every tax break on oil and coal? they WILL make money, do the same for solar? DEAD, its dead as a doornail. Don't get me wrong, that does NOT mean we shouldn't be spending on R&D, just the opposite, i think we need to spend like crazy on R&D so that we'll be the ones to find the breakthroughs on renewables but right now? Solar don't cut it.
And your "tax" idea sadly is just bullshit because it ALWAYS leads to the same place, lobbyist buys congress, gets breaks passed for THEIR country, you are right back in the same boat only you just made things worse and gave scammers more money, congrats. Don't believe me? Then WTF is China doing with most favored nation status? They do every nasty thing in the book to their people yet they are put on the same footing as Canada? WTF? Of course we ALL know the real reason why that is, too many rich making money off of disposable Chinese workers, too many lobbyists making out checks. fuck man the worst polluting coal plants in this country have exemptions from every God damned reg because they bribed the shit out of the politicians! I wish I still had the link as somebody actually got the owner of those plants cornered and the fucker bragged that the reason he can do WTF ever he wants is because "I can pick up the phone at 3AM and call the POTUS and he says "sir" to me"
so I'm sorry but until you get the scammers like Gore out of the system you might as well just send your paycheck to a televangelist, its the same thing, one says he is gonna save the afterlife, one says he's gonna save the world, both are completely full of shit. Just read this to see why that don't work because those guys are already ahead of you, they will have 400 loopholes already set up before the thing even gets to a fucking vote. either you be a bastard and say "this bullshit stops now" or you just accept all you are doing is giving your wallet to a televangelist who is telling you what you want to hear, sadly that is pretty much your choices friend.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A modern society would have plenty of warning if a supereruption were to happen again on that scale [...]
That is not necessarily the case... Regarding Yellowstone (VEI-8, the same explosiveness class as Toba), the USGS states, in part, the following:
"Massive caldera-forming eruptions, though the most potentially devastating of Yellowstone’s hazards, are extremely rare—only three have occurred in the past several million years. U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah, and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future. Recurrence intervals of these events are neither regular nor predictable." [Source. Emphasis mine.]
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
The Russians have a temporary Ice Camp near the North Pole for the month of April. The first base camp started in 2002.
There's no better place to study the Arctic than being in the Arctic itself.
Camp Barneo
Just like in the 70's when they were screaming about the impending Ice Age and how ICE was going to be clogging all of the Northern Port Cities - now it's Global Warming... Anything to get idiots who cannot read a thermometer to pay more money for things and get people willing to jack up the price of energy. They've been trying to do that for the past 40 years... Now they just say it's all Global Warming - temps nose-dive, it's Global Warming, temps climb, it's Global Warming...
How about we mark it up to Stupidity of large numbers of People and call it good... They can fret and worry, I'll pass...
The fundamental problem is that even if governments were economically competent, and they aren't, they wouldn't be competent enough to understand the complexity of everyone's needs and desires and somehow magically come up with a near optimal solution to that.
You move from 'greater command and control' to 'come up with a near optimal solution'. This is clearly a straw man. Giving a government more power in a market doesn't entail that private entities immediately become completely irrelevant and that the only thing influencing what is put to market is that government. Things like taxing, subsidizing and regulating are simple examples of how a government can steer a market away from or towards undesirable or desirable behaviour without being the sole player in that market. In addition to that: for some markets, the latter is the most effective strategy to maximize economic growth (public infrastructure etc.).
Note here that OPEC is a collection of countries, not for profit businesses.
Stop kidding yourself. The behaviour of the OPEC is driven by profit-seeking lobbyists and oil sheikhs, not bureaucracy. Were it not for regulations against colluding and enforcement of those regulations by governments, almost all markets would eventually be run and exploited by cartels or monopolists. The OPEC just happens to be an incredibly powerful international cartel.
so I'm sorry but until you get the scammers like Gore out of the system you might as well just send your paycheck to a televangelist, its the same thing, one says he is gonna save the afterlife, one says he's gonna save the world, both are completely full of shit
From where I sit, you are calling for the same thing as he is. You have a problem with the solution because you think it works, but you don't like the personality of the people who will profit most. Got it. Fuck the Earth, we want the conservative 0.9% to make the trillions from the scheme, not the liberal 0.1%.
Learn to love Alaska
Secondly, moving inward from the seas over 100-300 years, when few modern buildings last that long anyway, is not the major trouble people think it is.
What makes you think Florida has as much as 100-300 years left?
Which is odd since the majority of crime that could be deterred by permissive concealed carry laws also tends to correlate with urban.
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
So then you admit that reputable scientists disagree with AGW and at the same time are not shills for this or that industry, etc. eh?
I'd have to study more of what they say to see whether that's the case or not. Even if they're reputable in their field and not shills for fossil fuel industries, that doesn't mean they're actually right.
And please, realclimate? A hotbed of political activism and environmental wackos.
And the reason why I should believe you when you make that assertion is? Are you reputable, or are you just an anti-AGW wacko?
When it comes to climate what you're fundamentally talking about is an energy balance problem. It's not at chaotic as you think. There is energy coming into the system and energy going out and the difference is how much energy is retained. A change in energy retained causes all sorts of secondary effects like a change in temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans, a change in the level of water vapor in the atmosphere, and tertiary effects like changes in glaciers and weather. Both incoming and outgoing energy can and have been measured and there is a difference.
It's a beautiful example of the use of statistics. They statistically analyze the chance of any particular roll coming up and set the odds on the bets in their favor.
And I see slashdot as being very pro-gun. You apparently are.
Learn to love Alaska
The more guns a society has, the lower the crime rate.
The higher the crime rate, the greater the chance that an anti-gun law will be passed. Which is the cause? Anti-gun laws cause crime, or crime causes anti-gun laws?
Learn to love Alaska
Drop past Wal-Mart for a soda and a http://www.walmart.com/ip/Colt-LE6920-Carbine-Semi-Auto-Rifle-223-Rem-5.56-NATO/21677322.
Learn to love Alaska
> It's Slashdot. Despite being a tech and science nerd gathering spot, there's
> a strange strain of climate change denialism here. Maybe it's because
> the non-denialists don't bother commenting on these stories any more,
> leaving the denialists to defecate all over the comment section.
Nobody's denying climate change. Climate has been changing the past 4 billion years; climate is changing now; and it will keep changing for the next 4 billionn years. Deal with it.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
You need to go back to school
If you want to deny reality, the first thing you have to do is convince yourself that the experts aren't really experts, to "justify" ignoring them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Or a big refrigerator.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Yeah that's why the US has the lowest crime rate in the world . Countries that don't shit on their poor people are the ones with the lowest crime rates, that's why Switzerland has a low crime rate, not because people have guns.
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
Quite easily. In 100 six-sided dice rolls, there would be on average 16.6 ones, 16.6 twos, 16.6 threes, 16.6 fours, 16.6 fives and 16.6 sixs.
Actually the more dice rolls you allow me to perform the more accurate my prediction about the result would be. It's called statistics.
Furthermore, how can these "scientists" predict that July of 2014 will be warmer than January of 2014 in the northern hemisphere, when they cannot even predict the weather next weekend?
Urban environments have experienced what permissive concealed carry (in effect though rarely in law) would look like. There have been periods of time and neighborhoods where large numbers of people carry handguns concealed. What are otherwise unpleasant situations escalate into lethal situations. Even if there is some level of crime that is deterred people would rather have 5 additional shopliftings or vandalisms in exchange for 1 less shooting. Obviously guns can help when there is a total breakdown of policing. But that's far rarer than guns helping to lead to breakdown of policing.
The FBI is of the opinion that a gun was fired 260 times in 2011 resulting in defense of life.
About 50x that number died in gun related homicides and another 70x that number in gun related suicides.
I think most urban people would agree those are about the numbers they've experienced.
Very few of the scientists who are actively studying climate disagree with AGW. Those who disagree should delve into the subject and try to provide an explanation that does a better job than the current paradigm to explain the observations than the current one. Then I'll start listening to them.
Nope. The probability of a coin toss is 0.5. That is the same if it is 1 toss or 1000 tosses.
If you are trying to guess a specific number then sure 1000 is easier, but that's only because with 1 toss you can only go 1 or 0 which are both equally far away from 0.5.
With 1000 you'd of course go for 500 but the probability is still 0.5 (0.5 * 1000 = 500).
What would you guess for a billion? Yep 500,000,000. (0.5 * 1,000,000,000). Same probability. Nothing changes.
>Well its all fricking moot anyway isn't it?
It feels like this is certain. Partly since the ideas you mentioned to circumvent the problem are not really all that workable. Imagine the >2000 nuclear power plants you need to substitute the energy stored in coal, oil, and gas. What will the rate of >=INES6 events be? Remember we still can't eat wild animals in some parts of Germany due to Chernobyl, so much for the backyard.
Then you shouldn't forget that all geological resources need more and more energy to get them out of the ground over time due to declining concentration, so at some point your netto energy always declines to where your society reverts to a simpler state if you can't find anything new and better.
Then you always have the waste problem that you hope the environment will swallow but doesn't - that also affects your netto energy.
The problem now with our favourite waste CO2 is that it will stay with us for a long time, look at the following for a good explanation ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsnaXlhctLY ).
Combine this with the fact that we haven't come up with any clean replacement technologies that are put into production in a credible way (renewables in my country support ~2% of electric energy consumption and we seem somewhat committed), it should become apparent that the catastrophic non-linear climate change will hit us right in time when we run out of energy to deal with it.
Also notice that on the psychological level we won't be able to make the right decisions, first of all the effects of CO2 are delayed by around 40 years http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html this will take the otherwise sensible "show me" guys out of the pool of people you can get behind your "do something, anything" agenda. Then as things go down people will fall prey to hyperbolic discounting and say lets use those resources as the danger is far away.
They are under pressure from netto energy decline now and also decide against investing in new and uncertain technologies that will give them less netto energy anyway but could help with things in the future, (this has been called the energy trap http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/, and is more generally mentioned by Denis Meadows while not involving energy), hyperbolic discounting at work again.
Notice that many people have researched the issues, politicians have attempted to deal with the issues in some halfhearted form and gotten nowhere. Also notice that people have no problem to go to war over resource issues and risk loss of live for more oil or gold (the latter being the worst reason). I'm pretty sure that they also have no problem accepting loss of live on a grand scale, but it does have to happen later and maybe stretched out over time and space so we don't notice that much.
Because of that, I'm 100% certain that no action will be taken regarding climate change that will amount to substantial preventative measures. Which is easy to say since way back in the 19th century was the time to plan ahead, and some good insights that could have led to action then, never had any impact.
Je me souviens.
Nooo...it was because many of us that was for actually FIXING the problem saw the AGW platform hijacked by scammers [nakedcapitalism.com] who don't give a flying fuck about the climate or the planet, they just want to fleece you for themselves and their friends.
Then let's look at the evidence: firstly you say that in general, people on slashdot adopting a counter position do so because emissions reduction schemes (i.e cap and trade, emissions trading, direct legislation for reduction) are a scam. But they think the actual phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change is real:
This guy thinks the reduction in arctic sea ice is caused by underwater volcanoes: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43442631. If he thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real, why is he saying that it is not? This seems disingenuous.
This guys seems to think that the predictions of climate science can't be trusted - although bizarrely, he posted a link which indicates otherwise: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43441341. If he though those predictions could be trusted, why not say so? This seems disingenuous.
This guy thinks that the arctic ice is not melting at all: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43441403 - if he thinks that AGW is real (and evidenced by melting arctic ice) why did he not just say it? This seems disingenuous.
This guy thinks it's happened but won't get off his arse and do anything about it because it will mainly happen to poor people: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43443501. If, he, as you claim, is genuinely concerned about climate change, why does he not just say so? This seems disingenuous.
Notably, these positions are all:
1. Notably lacking any hard evidence
2. In contradiciton with one another
As is yours.
Why is the true position?
Which out of the whole crowd of you is telling us the truth?
Fools call it climate. Shucks folks, even your weatherman cannot get it right consistantly. And their models are for your local weather. But in NASA's wisdom, in the name of the gd of cst savings, they threw away all the working models, that were working to predict the weather, at 90% or better accuracy and have gone to models with a lot worse accuracy. Look at the weather bureaus rate of accuracy now, at one week, to seasonal. wrong models. That affects/effects all of your lives. From planting crops, to harvesting to your daily commute. To me, thats sabatoge. Thats a crime. But just like the bankers, ...
So we justify anothers death in the name of another dollar saved...
And they call themselfs christian...
Wow. I bet you think you're so very clever. You obviously know that "climate change" refers to AGW, and yet you decided you'd play a semantic trick. Boy, you sure got me! You must be the smartest of your friends.
Not very strong, and not very enduring. I know, mixing Imperial and Metric is confusing.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Why??
I've already got a Mini-14 (walnut stock), which is functionally identical to the AR-15 clone but without the bother of being considered an "assault weapon".
No, I don't have any 30 round magazines, alas. Closest I could find were 35-rd magazines....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Urban environments have experienced what permissive concealed carry (in effect though rarely in law) would look like. There have been periods of time and neighborhoods where large numbers of people carry handguns concealed.
Were the concealed carry people in your uncited example the type of citizens who would qualify for a permit if they were legal? The kind of responsible concealed carry permit holder that would best be a crime deterrent tend to also be the type that wouldn't intentionally break the law no matter how strongly they may disagree with it.
What are otherwise unpleasant situations escalate into lethal situations. Even if there is some level of crime that is deterred people would rather have 5 additional shopliftings or vandalisms in exchange for 1 less shooting.
Here you are considering a trade-off between non-violent property crimes and shootings, to be fair you must compare between more similar crimes. How many additional rapes are the people willing to accept? Muggings? Car-jackings?
Obviously guns can help when there is a total breakdown of policing. But that's far rarer than guns helping to lead to breakdown of policing.
Citizen owned guns are probably most effective somewhere between the two extremes. In a lawless state self defense becomes an arms race, in a police-state they weaken the power of the state (not necessarily a bad thing), and somewhere in the middle they serve as an additional layer of defense against an immediate threat while deterring overall crime-rates making the limited police resources more effective.
The FBI is of the opinion that a gun was fired 260 times in 2011 resulting in defense of life.
That number clearly excludes law enforcement officer discharges, of which there were 36 in NYC alone during that same year. Also missing from that statistic are the untrackable number of times mere brandishment of a firearm achieved the same end (i.e. defense of life).
About 50x that number died in gun related homicides and another 70x that number in gun related suicides.
I think most urban people would agree those are about the numbers they've experienced.
The ratios you quote are meaningless since the numbers are measured with wildly different methodologies and errors (see previous point).
And lastly and most politically incorrect of all: How many more Columbines or Sandy Hooks would you be willing to accept if we eliminated gun-related suicide entirely?
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
PS: And how did we end up discussing this in a thread about AGW denialism?
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
Put an icecube in a glass of water. As it melts the water level will not change because the ice cube displaces the same volume of water as the amount that melts. In In the same way, sea levels will not rise even if all the ice on the sea melts. Check this video for an example. Nothing to see here, move along and thank you science!
Yep, keep talking Democratic Party line. Like anything, honest conversation never enters into your mantra. Don't like the Civil Rights Act? String up some more darkies like your forefathers did.
climate change -> climate denialism -> conservative politics -> gun policy
My forefathers? Where my family lived there was no meaningful klan activity. The Democratic party was the party for Catholics and the working class while the Republican party was Protestant and merchant class. The two parties worked together and helped to build a decent society. Then the southern racists that currently run your party took the Republican party over the New England Republican party are now running the Democratic party while working with the working class interests that formed the traditional Democratic party.
The Republican party in the 1950s was a great party. And if they still existed I'd be voting for them. But they don't.
I don't disagree with your premise, but evacuating North and South America when Yosemite pops may be problematic.
Contributing factor, I agree. But ignoring the wanton roaming warlords could be hazardous to your health, too.
That's clever of you, but it's also the exact point of the post you are replying to.
climate change -> climate denialism -> conservative politics -> gun policy -> Godwin
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
So you don't "support" AGW because of people like Al Gore? Are you, like the vast majority of deniers, too fucking stupid to separate the science and the scams? Just because Al Gore may be a hypocritical idiot doesn't make the science false.
Whenever you read a DIRE prediction about anything, you need to translate this immediately to:
Budget battle underway, cut in funding is imminent, must create panic now.
This has been going on ever since Governments started handing out your money to people who's ideas weren't good enough to survive in the free market.
I predict that in the next ten years, people will continue to shout their ideology at each other while claiming to understand science, physics, and math better than the other guy. People will believe damn near anything if it's dire enough, worrisome enough, and has the end of life as we know it associated with it. Double this effect if some amorphous entity is setup as the straw man to be hated and despised, particularly if the believer can be convinced that these entities have it better than they do. The more emotion, the more proven the "science". The simple fact that GREED is one of the most powerful of all human forces next to LOVE is lost on many people. A FEW people here get this, and they are to be commended. I'd wager they are older than your average "The World is going to End unless" folks.
Murphy was an optimist
Were the concealed carry people in your uncited example the type of citizens who would qualify for a permit if they were legal? The kind of responsible concealed carry permit holder that would best be a crime deterrent tend to also be the type that wouldn't intentionally break the law no matter how strongly they may disagree with it.
Its hard to know. Very strict concealed carry laws have gotten rolled back in many states. So today most people whom you would want to have guns would qualify, at the time not so much. But I don't think the best deterrents are people with clean records. When I was growing up we had organized crime. Those guys were excellent deterrents to disorganized crime but wouldn't pass a background check.
Here you are considering a trade-off between non-violent property crimes and shootings, to be fair you must compare between more similar crimes. How many additional rapes are the people willing to accept? Muggings? Car-jackings?
I'd be curious if car-jackings don't correlate strongly with gun availability. But muggings I'd agree that's a good case were gun deterrence could work well. OTOH mugging is super easy to stop via. policing because muggers have to do so many per day.
Citizen owned guns are probably most effective somewhere between the two extremes. In a lawless state self defense becomes an arms race
Yes it does. And there ratios of criminals to non criminals matter.
and somewhere in the middle they serve as an additional layer of defense against an immediate threat while deterring overall crime-rates making the limited police resources more effective.
That's what I'm unsure of. I think you need to be pretty close to the anarchy extreme.
The ratios you quote are meaningless since the numbers are measured with wildly different methodologies and errors (see previous point).
I'd agree with the statistical problems I'd assume they are large enough differences to correct for statistical issues. Cut 50x down to only 25x or even 10x and it is still overwhelming.
And lastly and most politically incorrect of all: How many more Columbines or Sandy Hooks would you be willing to accept if we eliminated gun-related suicide entirely?
We lost 20k per year to gun related suicides. All the school shootings combined don't get you to one month's worth. More importantly we had in Arizona exactly the situation the gun advocates wanted armed people in the crowd. They couldn't do anything into the cover fire stopped (31 rounds expended). And then the armed guy closest misidentified and was getting ready to kill one of the heroes who was disarming Loughner. Obviously we don't want to draw too much from one case, but the whole armed deterrence / shooting back didn't work out so well under more or less perfect conditions.
What eventually happens in a government command and control system is the same thing that has happened for the last three, four thousand years.
A small group of extremely smart folks with zero compassion for their fellow man eventually enslave everyone else and live glorious lives of pure narcissistic pleasure.
Remember this, all you liberals screaming for the complete elimination of the opposition. You aren't going to get UTOPIA you're going to get the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Medieval Rule, the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, etc. etc. etc. We are a lot closer to this today than we ever have been already.
Murphy was an optimist
Seriously, any part of physics that isn't significantly affected by quantum effects yields much more accurate predictions, as does chemistry.
Nonsense. You got that backwards. Ever heard of an atomic clock, the most accurate timepiece? It is quantum mechanical. Chemistry is quantum mechanics. How does chemistry work without atoms and electrons, which are quantum objects? I think you confuse Heisenberg uncertainty with measurement accuracy.
The most accurate measured quantities are quantum mechanical, e.g. the spin-flip transition of the 1s ground state of hydrogen, "hyperfine" frequencies, or maser frequencies. You think you can specify ballistic results to a part in 10^12 or better? Using an atomic fountain, measurements accurate to a few parts in 10^15 have been performed. This extends the results of Norman Ramsey, who won the Nobel Prize for his research.
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller
Social trends?
Well, I predict I won't be getting laid this week.
Also, I predict this post will not be modded up.
I think if you analyze the amount of heat energy volcanoes emit compared to the amount of heat energy required to effect the changes we've observed you would find volcanic heat is totally inadequate to explain the melting.
Climate change gonna come at last
Now your icebergs are meltin' fast
A modern society would have plenty of warning if a supereruption were to happen again on that scale ...
I'm not so sure about that. It's easy to imagine that it would be less than a year between the first indications that something's happening and the actual eruption and that scientists would not be able to tell if it was just going to be a more normal scale eruption or a supereruption before it happened. An eruption on that scale probably doesn't lead to the extinction of the human race but it certainly could cause millions or perhaps even billions of deaths especially if it's in the northern hemisphere.
The probability of a coin toss is 0.5. That is the same if it is 1 toss or 1000 tosses.
The probability of *A* coin toss is 0.5, but the aggregate probability of 0.5 over 1000 coin tosses is not.
If you are trying to guess a specific number then sure 1000 is easier, but that's only because with 1 toss you can only go 1 or 0 which are both equally far away from 0.5. With 1000 you'd of course go for 500 but the probability is still 0.5 (0.5 * 1000 = 500).
No, the probability of exactly 500 after 1000 is about 2%. It'll be a curve around 500, with a max at 500, but it is not so concentrated at 500 as you assert.
Learn to love Alaska
The question wasn't about whether you personally needed another AR-15 clone, but whether you "could" buy an "assault weapon" casually. You can. The posts indicating it's "illegal" to pick up an "assault weapon" with coke and chips are wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
No, it's illegal to do so at a 7-11, unless the cashier also holds an FFL, which makes him just another gun dealer.
Note also that one of the points *I* was making is that the difference between an "assault weapon" and a "Not assault weapon" is sometimes as small as the material the stock is made of.
It should also be noted that even if you buy a walnut-stocked Mini-14 (not an assault weapon), and then replace the stock with a synthetic stock with pistol grip, it is STILL NOT AN ASSAULT WEAPON!
The law is written specifying makes and models as "assault weapons" or "exempt weapons". Which you have, in the case of the mini-14, will be determined by the serial number of the piece (which won't change just because you replace the stock. Or the front sight. Or put a 35-rd magazine in the magazine well instead of the five rd magazine that comes with).
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Ah, then I undersand all your "distinctions" and find them pedantic and irrelevant.
Is there a ubiquitous store that sells coke, chips, and an "assault weapon" (or something close to it)? Yes.
Are there logical inconsistencies around the definition of "assault weapon"? Yes.
The pro-gun insist that if the anti-gun can't even define assault weapons in a meaningful way, they should be trivialized. But I find the converse to be true. If the gun-nuts can't accept a definition they disagree with as a point of fact, rather than a topic of debate, they are similarly insane/stupid and should be trivialized.
Learn to love Alaska
Actually I'm a socialist that leads communist, I just fucking hate reverse robin hood scams which is ALL the crap&trade shit is! All you are doing is the classic "We have to do something!" fallacy which always ends up not doing a God damned thing but letting a few guys at the top make out like fucking bandits without actually fixing shit, its another bridge to nowhere, another regulation that will have 40 fucking loopholes written in before it gets to the floor, its fucking bullshit.
If you are gonna do that shit, why not just send your money to a televangelist that says Jesus is gonna fix it? You'll be doing the same thing, neither will fix jack shit, both will allow a few at the top to make out like bandits, and at least most of the preachers do try to keep the fucking smug levels down, whereas Gore and friends are douches to the 1 billionth power.
If he was real and honest and walked the walk like Ed Begley Jr, who lives in a modest house and drives electric cars because he doesn't want to ruin the environment? I would be 100% behind him but he doesn't, he is just another fat fuck sitting in a limo stuffing his fat face telling YOU that YOU need to use less while he blasts the AC and throws his wrappers out the window. Fuck him and fuck anybody that supports the whole "do as I say, not as I do" bullshit because YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, nothing real will get done as long as these snake oil scammers are selling their bullshit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Being chaotic is a qualitative property not a quantitative property, chaotic systems often have numerous periods of stability. People often mistake erratic behaviour as chaotic, and stable behaviour as non-chaotic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
How do we send the developed world back to the 19th century and force the third world to stay there? It wont be the "evil" climate scientist but someone with political power and GUNS. If we cut back quickly billions will die of starvation. Do it slowly and the Earth will suffer more extreme climate change and those who survive will still have to reduced population levels by 50% or more. How do you insure that only the right (few) people have children? How will you punish those who cheat?
That's right. The warming that we've seen for a few decades has stopped and we will be back to our normal "ice age" self sooner than you think. CO2 is not the control. EVERY SINGLE prediction made by the warming camp has been shown to be WRONG. Their models are garbage. Expensive garbage but still GIGO.
Yay, more info to make the liberals and eco-crazies tell the rest of us how we must live in order to save the planet at the expense of our bank account and/or our comfort. We are more worried about the so-called issues the polar bears are experiencing than we are about the million babies aborted each year, which is REAL, not propaganda. Anyone who believes this is actionable info has their priorities messed up.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Oh bullshit, solar panels aren't even 50% efficient right now
What is the point of that statement? Fossil-fueled and nuclear power plants are not even 50% efficient right now. Explain why it matters for solar but not for other fuels. It's almost as if there is some other parameter that is more important, like dollars per watt or something similar...
Because just as corn ethanol is a pointless dead end but has a shitload of lobbyists to keep that crap going so too is the greenies gonna keep throwing money down the pisser on solar panels when there are other things that may turn out to be MUCH better in the long run, tidal generation, molten salt solar, high altitude wind extraction just to name 3.
Again this ALL comes down to scammers using the "ZOMFG we have GOT to do something!" crowd to their own ends, because there is a hell of a big difference between doing something and doing something SMART or effective. I mean you could hear a tornado is coming your way and you can cover yourself in feces and do the Charleston, after all that IS doing something about the situation, but all that will accomplish is making it easier to find your dumb dead ass by the stench. A SMART person would go into a shelter and live to see another day...see the difference? With current tech solar panels are the former, you simply can't make the math work without government tilting the living hell out of the scales, you just can't.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You do understand climate change is being used by politicians as argument for even greater government command-and-control of the economy, don't you? Even though there are plenty of solutions which do not require such; those are ignored because they don't fit with the agenda of politicians.
In this, the scientists are fulfilling their role as "useful idiots".
How is that the scientists' problem, or casting the science in any doubt? Facts don't vanish because they have unpleasant political effects, wether necessarily or not. If a largish asteroid were heading towards earth, that would most likely also cause giant government programs to spring up. But would that be a reason for scientist to ignore the rock? Or, historically, entering WW-II caused a giant government intervention in the US. So would it have been ok to keep Pearl Harbour under wraps? Some scientific or historical facts don't jibe well with some political views. But that does not mean that science or history have to bend. It means that the people holding the view need to accomodate the facts, or live with the mental discrepancy. You know, "your own opinion, but not your own facts".
Stephan
Can ballistics predict how many times private smith will hit his target during next weekend's target practice? No? Then ballistics and physics are clearly not science because they has no useful predictive ability... Or at least that what I've being told to believe by loud angry people who aren't scientists.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Who's bright idea was it that it's a 'good thing' our planet is frozen solid almost perpetually above and below certain lattitutdes? During the time of the dinosaurs there were no polar ice caps and the world was much hotter than even global warming predicts we could get. Was the planet one big smouldering desert that killed off tons of species? Nope. It had a higher biodiversity than we have ever seen in mankinds entire history. Storms were no worse than they are today, more of the available land was habitable, and life THRIVED.
Ask me if I'm afraid of global warming, go ahead, ask me.
No.
If the Arctic starts to become ice free in the summer months it will allow for unprecedented access to the ocean, open up shorter, cheaper, more environmentally friendly trade routes for ocean vessels, not to mention exploration of the ocean and it's depths.
Now if we could only thaw out Antarctica too then we would really be moving along. Yeah we might lose a little coastline around the planet but the rise would be gradual and we would adapt. Remember Jamestown, North America's first settlement? Underwater right now. The fact is that coastlines already change even within a few generations, why be worried about loosing some more? The earth isn't going to flood, it's not going to e a 'water world'. Were the dinosaurs underwater? Nope.
Antarctica is an entire continent that is virtually inaccessible and unexplored. Underneath millions of years of snow and ice is an entire land waiting to come free of a million year deep freeze complete with new mountains, lakes, not to mention habitable land. Who knows what we will discover locked beneath the ice there. It makes me excited.
So don't worry, learn to enjoy not having thousands of people and millions of dollars in lost wages and damage every year from severe winter weather, and uh yeah. We get to go swimming in December, a reward for returning the earth to it's natural state of not being frozen solid year round.
You mean, by the time reality forces them to recognize there is problem, they'll deny that anything could have been done while simultaneously blaming government for the problem.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Read the God damned link the ONLY things that will get passed if you support AGW right now is FUCKING SCAMS, you will do NOTHING, not a God damned thing, to lower carbon by a single fucking pint, ALL YOU WILL DO is make fat fucks like Al Gore rich!
Strange because previous cap and trade systems actually reduced emissions. The point of cap and trade schemes is to make them attractive to rich assholes so they'll see a profit opportunity and support them. Regulation or taxes are both better and more effective systems, but this the United States of America we're talking about and if you don't get some of the fat rich people on your side, it's not going to happen at all, and that's even costlier than buying off the rich assholes.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
No, your assertion is completely made up.
It's not really clear at this point whether climate is truly chaotic or not on the large scale. I found this post on the subject that is quite interesting. As well as the post some of the comments are quite pertinent.
If you disagree make a positive case of a general acceptance of change.
I think you're being too vague measuring conservativeness only by acceptance of change.
I would classify slashdot more as utilitarian than conservative. Slashdot accept and reject things based on perceived utility. A new paradigm/language/whatever is often rejected because slashdot does not see any value in switching.
But if something new does have perceived utility, slashdot would embrace it. Say, the open source initiative. You mentioned Wayland vs Linux, but remember that Linux itself was a change from a Windows-dominant world.
One other indication that slashdot is utilitarian as opposed to conservative is how slashdot has no problem rejecting free market capitalism or libertarianism (things conservatives usually support, because conservatives think we "had" a free market and free society, and want to keep it that way/roll society back to those Good Old Times). For whatever reason, slashdot feels that those things do not provide maximum utility. This sets up the stage for a minority of conservatives and libertarians to whine about just how "socialist" the slashdot mob is.
My N900 going strong into it's 3rd year. However it is objectively slower and has worse screen than newer models, so upgrading is not just following fashion.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Or at least that what I've being told to believe by loud angry people who aren't scientists.
As you say, they aren't scientists. Ballistics is used to determine where the projectile will strike, depending on how it's aimed and how much charge there is and it's very, very good at that. How often a particular marksman will hit the target is outside its purview.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I think you're being too vague measuring conservativeness only by acceptance of change.
There is a problem. The word conservative has overlapping meanings and is vague.
But if something new does have perceived utility, slashdot would embrace it. Say, the open source initiative.
Open source predates /. /. was born out of the open source initiative, i.e. the Linux movement.
You mentioned Wayland vs Linux, but remember that Linux itself was a change from a Windows-dominant world.
Well first off, I agree that /. used to not be conservative. I think this is a recent change.
On the issue of the underlying fact I don't fully agree. The Linux movement came out of the academic Unix community. Basically a way of providing a bad Unix on x86 for much less money than a good Unix would cost. /. when it started had a lot of people like me who had come to Linux from UNIX. We were interested in Linux because it gave us the opportunity to do stuff we would have liked to do on an SGI/AIX/Solaris box cheaply.
The next wave was definitely Linux enthusiasts who were moving away from Windows and were looking for a desktop operating system with capabilities well beyond what Windows 98/ME offered.
how slashdot has no problem rejecting free market capitalism or libertarianism
I wouldn't agree with you. I'd say that in general /. is pro capitalists and leans libertarian. How often do you hear calls for government takeovers the database industry for example?
Open source predates /. /. was born out of the open source initiative, i.e. the Linux movement.
This indicates another problem with measuring something as vague as conservativeness: who is conservative or not depends on where you set your point of reference.
Well first off, I agree that /. used to not be conservative. I think this is a recent change.
This ties in with the point of reference. It appears your point of reference is "recent", however long ago that is. You seem to think that anybody who consistently rejects new things that has happened since then is being conservative. My view is that they are rejecting those things because they see no worthwhile utility to embrace the changes.
I see it like how PC desktop sales have gone down: people aren't buying new PCs not because they're conservative, but because their old PCs are "good enough" and there's little utility gain to upgrade (but slashdot would totally recommend switching to an SSD)
I wouldn't agree with you. I'd say that in general /. is pro capitalists and leans libertarian. How often do you hear calls for government takeovers the database industry for example?
I think this is a false dilemma. Rejecting capitalism and libertarianism doesn't mean you unconditionally Love Big Brother.
I do think slashdot has a more liberal stance towards public education than conservatives or libertarians. I also think slashdot is more accepting of government breaking/preventing monopolies, instead of "let the free market handle it" or "it's government that created those monopolies in the first place!"
Here's a thought - we could take you stuff and give it to them. That would at least partially alleviate their loss.
Molon labe. How could everyone wants my stuff rather than just taking modest steps to improve their own lives?
You move from 'greater command and control' to 'come up with a near optimal solution'.
If you're not coming up with something near optimal, then you're wasting time and resources.
Are you now arguing the Republicans aren't a conservative party in the classic sense?
I notice when you get called on the fallacy of equivocation (that is, shifting between definitions in order to make an argument), only then do you complain that "conservative" is "vague". But here, we see that you are using two different definitions, the "classical" sense and the sense of opposing change in general. The vagueness of the two definitions doesn't excuse your little game here.
If it weren't for massive government subsidies and other incentives and regulations
and? Governments dump a lot of money into a lot of things. We don't normally assume that we wouldn't have, say immigration or house building, without a vast government bureaucracy to regulate or subsidize it.
I have no problem with the government doing this. It points out, though, that the private sector is unwilling or unable to take on these tasks. That's not necessarily and indictment of the private sector either. I think that many economic systems have their strengths and weaknesses. Rather than insisting that one or the other can do everything, why not mix and match? The markets won't solve long-term environmental problems like AGW, but the public sector can. So let the public sector do it.
Those who insist that the private sector can and will (or already has) solved these kinds of problems are wrong. The private sector alone hasn't. Again, not necessarily an indictment of the private sector, but definitely an indictment of those libertarian types who think that a free market left along by government regulation and prodding would produce optimal outcomes for every problem facing civilization.
It points out, though, that the private sector is unwilling or unable to take on these tasks.
There is the default reason - because it isn't worth doing.
Those who insist that the private sector can and will (or already has) solved these kinds of problems are wrong.
You have a reason you say that? I find it interesting how the people who laud the governments' ability to do things have a remarkable inability to argue the value of the things that government does.
The thing is, even without government subsidies we would still have electric cars, renewable energy generation, and a number of other things. These have value even in the absence of government subsidy.
Also government subsidies aren't always a net good. For example, your complaint that free markets don't solve "long term" problems. They solve the big problems like overpopulation and poverty.
And the notorious short sightedness of modern businesses can readily be explained by the incentives that governments provide for short term thinking such as "too big to fail", massive R&D subsidies that crowd out private funding, Keynesian-style economic strategies that reduce the risks of making bad decisions, and the various government incentives for creating various sorts of economic bubbles.
For example, in the US, many private universities and research funding was sponsored by the private sector prior to the Second World War. Similarly, a number of businesses has created powerful R&D groups. Yet most of these activities have died in the past few decades.
Again, not necessarily an indictment of the private sector, but definitely an indictment of those libertarian types who think that a free market left along by government regulation and prodding would produce optimal outcomes for every problem facing civilization.
Like government solved the problem of companies thinking too long term?
> There is the default reason - because it isn't worth doing.
This ends up being a circular argument. The private sector didn't do it because it wasn't worth doing. How do we know it wasn't worth doing? The private sector didn't do it. I happen to think that regulation to ensure a fair marketplace is worth doing, and the private sector by definition can't do it. That's one of many things.
> You have a reason you say that? I find it interesting how the people who laud the governments' ability to do things have a remarkable inability to argue the value of the things that government does.
Or you just have a remarkable inability to listen or care. Social welfare programs, environmental regulations, publicly funded research, education subsidies, rural electrification, roads, etc. etc. etc. It's a long list. I'm sure you'll come up with some contrived reason why the private sector would have done all of these things better, or why it's not really the government that's doing these things, or why the government is actually doing them so awfully, but we accept it because we are blind liberal idiots. I'm still happy to support these types of government operations...and also call out bad government (military aggression/MIC, corporate welfare, spying on citizens, the criminal "justice" system, bloated bureaucracies that could use quite a trim, congress, etc. etc.).
> Also government subsidies aren't always a net good. For example, your complaint that free markets don't solve "long term" problems. They solve the big problems like overpopulation and poverty.
Well, maybe if you had read my post, you'd see that I said that the private sector does some things really well and the public sector does some things really well, and it's in our best interest to use both where they have their strengths, rather than go for a one size fits all. So yes, I'm perfectly happy to agree with you that government subsidies don't always lead to good (ethanol, for one, and maybe even some loser green subsidies).
I don't think that the market actually solves overpopulation or poverty per se. It solves poverty for some people, but generally leaves a lot out in the cold, especially when there are other societal biases in play (and let's face it, there are and always will be and the market doesn't care). The market thrives on generating and exploiting abundance until the train runs out. An out of control population is great for a market (more workers, more markets, more money)...until the crash comes.
> And the notorious short sightedness of modern businesses can readily be explained by the incentives that governments provide for short term thinking such as "too big to fail", massive R&D subsidies that crowd out private funding, Keynesian-style economic strategies that reduce the risks of making bad decisions, and the various government incentives for creating various sorts of economic bubbles.
No, I just don't buy this in the general case. Government stimulus doesn't explain companies with no hope of a bail-out that go for cost-cutting and layoffs to improve next quarter's profits and shareholder returns. Short-sightedness is a fundamental feature of a free market by its very definition. It's reactive. It adjusts to the needs of the marketplace at the moment. A company cannot afford to spend 20 years doing research and then come out with a great product. Nobody will fund them for 20 years. They have to come out with a product now. And they have to keep making money, or else they go under. The long-term generally isn't profitable except for big firms (which by necessity there will only be few of) that can afford to have loss-leaders and similar mechanisms to gain marketshare or develop the next big thing without worrying about how to keep the lights on tomorrow. And firms certainly won't ever care about general environmental problems, because the issue is too broad. And firms are NOT going to care about what the Earth will be like in 100 years because of their pollution. How could the market eve
If you're not coming up with something near optimal, then you're wasting time and resources.
You ignored most of my previous comment. I'd like to believe that means that you agree with what I wrote, but considering your reply it seems that you are simply closing your mind for other points of view and wish to cling on to an irrational antipathy against 'government'.
This ends up being a circular argument.
Not at all. If it is worth doing, then the private sector eventually does it. I was just responding to the nonsensical argument that we need to squander vast sums of public funds because something isn't being done by the private sector.
"Worth doing" is not true. The real condition is that it must be able to insure cash flow. That is, it's worth having private parties pay for directly. Not everything falls into that category. The people who need it may not have any money (helping the poor and sick). There may be no one distinct party or set of parties that can or should pay for it under market conditions (taking care of the environment outside of some specific cases). The market is not a magic bullet. It's great and does a lot of awesome things very efficiently, but it can't do everything. And that's actually okay.
Or you just have a remarkable inability to listen or care. Social welfare programs, environmental regulations, publicly funded research, education subsidies, rural electrification, roads, etc. etc. etc.
Classic example of what I was talking about. Roads have an obvious return on value (at least when people use them). The rest of your list doesn't. Some of those such as most of the "social welfare" programs, environmental regulations, and educational subsidies even have negative return. Where's defense and law enforcement? Firefighting?
I don't think that the market actually solves overpopulation or poverty per se. It solves poverty for some people, but generally leaves a lot out in the cold, especially when there are other societal biases in play (and let's face it, there are and always will be and the market doesn't care). The market thrives on generating and exploiting abundance until the train runs out. An out of control population is great for a market (more workers, more markets, more money)...until the crash comes.
The number of "some people" which you refer to is currently the world's entire population. Every country on Earth shows increasing wealth building per capita, even in the worst off such as the ever popular example of Somalia. And increasing wealth is negatively correlated with population growth everywhere.
And in the past 50-60 years, our scientific programs have been the envy of the world (also many of these labs lasted well past the time that we started doing a lot of public funding, and they did well in their day...when companies cared -- once downsizing and outsourcing became the motto, R&D become a cost-center -- the fact that gov't was footing some of the bill was just icing on the cake, but not the root of the problem).
Well, what else could do it? Greed isn't any more prevalent now than it was. How we do business hasn't really changed to favor the short-sighted. Government-based shielding of the private world from bad decisions is the big move.
And by not locking up research in private institutions with a profit motive, the fruits of the research can be shared both within the research community and outside of it.
I see you don't get it. There's all this free research going on. Why should businesses bother with R&D when they can get it for free?
> Classic example of what I was talking about. Roads have an obvious return on value (at least when people use them). The rest of your list doesn't. Some of those such as most of the "social welfare" programs, environmental regulations, and educational subsidies even have negative return. Where's defense and law enforcement? Firefighting?
You're thinking is far too limited. Environmental regulations have a positive return, but not in the same kind of direct way that the market cares about. If you have a sick population and depleted fisheries and land that can't be used due to pollution, that has a cost, a big cost, on society and the market. But these problems often take so long to manifest themselves and are so dilute, that the market will never be able to price them in. That's why we have this term "externality" to describe these types of things. Same with social welfare and education.
Defense, law enforcement and firefighting go in the "etc. etc." section.
> The number of "some people" which you refer to is currently the world's entire population. Every country on Earth shows increasing wealth building per capita, even in the worst off such as the ever popular example of Somalia. And increasing wealth is negatively correlated with population growth everywhere.
And that's great.
> Well, what else could do it? Greed isn't any more prevalent now than it was. How we do business hasn't really changed to favor the short-sighted. Government-based shielding of the private world from bad decisions is the big move.
There's a lot more money available, a lot more at stake, at lot more potential to exercise that greed in amazing ways.
You keep talking about this government-based shielding, but it actually only affects a small part of the market. Sure, big oil and big banking are doing well with government shielding, and nobody's happy about that. But many other businesses have no such shielding, and also have to pay the burden of regulation and litigation, all government-induced costs and restraints.
> I see you don't get it. There's all this free research going on. Why should businesses bother with R&D when they can get it for free?
I get it, I just don't have a problem with it. You say "why should businesses bother when they can get it for free" like it's a bad thing. I see it as a great thing. We use public money to create basic knowledge that can be used by the private sector to build products and improve people's lives and make some money in the process. I see that as a win-win, and a great investment on the part of the public sector. And unlike with private sector research, the results will not be encumbered with patents or hidden away as trade secrets.
I think we just have a fundamental disagreement about the validity of public institutions. You seem to think that the private sector can and should do everything and that anything it doesn't do isn't really worth it, based entirely on the motive of monetary transactions. I happen to think that the world is a bigger place than what can make money, and that some things are so disconnected and distributed that the only solution is a public sector one. Environmental protection is the big one. There's simply no sane way to price in environmental costs over the long-run using an entirely private sector, market-based approach. Some regulation and taxation will bring the externalities of the environment into the market, and the market will take care of the rest. Again, seems like a win-win to me.
Make no mistake, I am not at all happy about the way our big government is being run today. I don't think, however, destroying public institutions is the solution. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Environmental regulations have a positive return, but not in the same kind of direct way that the market cares about.
You mean the "export to third world countries" kind of way? Believe me markets care about that.
. If you have a sick population and depleted fisheries and land that can't be used due to pollution, that has a cost, a big cost, on society and the market.
Not really. The costs of these sorts of things have been exaggerated. And markets aren't affected by these sorts of things. Especially when such as the cases of sick people and depleted fisheries, markets have been excluded.
There's a lot more money available, a lot more at stake, at lot more potential to exercise that greed in amazing ways.
This is the sort of weaselly bullshit I've come to expect when peoples' prejudices are questioned. You don't have a clue. As I noted, nothing really has changed. It doesn't matter if there are orders of magnitude more money than there are now. That's irrelevant to greed. It scales with quantity of money quite readily. Similarly, the "potential to exercise greed" is grossly overstated. The economy and the many markets have changed in a number of ways over the past century, but not in a way that magically causes greedy people to act differently. What has changed is that now, when you make enormous mistakes, there is a government out there to bail you out.
You say "why should businesses bother when they can get it for free" like it's a bad thing.
Well, is a bunch of short-sighted businesses which can't be bothered to do their own research good or bad? I think it's bad.