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Chain Reaction Shattered Antarctica's Larson B Ice Shelf
New submitter Jim McNicholas writes "At the end of the summer of 2002, all 3000 lakes on the Larsen B ice shelf drained away in the space of a week. And then the 2,700-square-kilometre ice shelf, which was some 220 metres thick and might have existed for some 12,000 years, rapidly disintegrated into small icebergs. The draining of one lake on an ice shelf changes the stress field in nearby areas, causing a fracture circle to form around the lake."
if we decided to take action BEFORE we turn ourselves into Easter Island.
Ok, this happened some years ago. Is useful to predict what will happen maybe soon if there are big ice shelves in similar conditions? Are we walking in thin ice, and could happen from a week to the next that a very huge amount of water is added to the oceans? I don't think nothing of this scale will be enough to make the ocean level rise in a noticeable way, but if we are in that scenario will be pretty bad, maybe we can adapt to the oceans rising a meter in a whole century, but no that that kind of change is so fast.
Hey, 11 is better than 10 ... because it's 11.
Damn you Randall! Must you poke your nose in everywhere?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
He's done few things that are truly important. The Patriot Act? He didn't repeal it. The TSA? He's done nothing. The NSA spying? He basically agrees with it. The surveillance state in general? Again, he basically agrees with it. Neither the republicans nor democrats are any good.
If they report it immediately, then there are complaints that we don't have all the facts in. If it's reported after the facts are in, someone will point to an unsubstantiated guess that happened to be right, but beat Slashdot by years. The best is when Slashdot does both, and gets bashed for the initial report, the "delayed" report and the dupe.
Learn to love Alaska
It wasn't in the 70's. It was in the 60's.
Yes, eleven years ago we knew that it had collapsed, but we didn't know why it had collapsed. This new model might both explain why, and perhaps predict future ice shelf collapse.
13,000 years ago was the peak of the Holocene Optimum, when the Earth was warmer, glaciers smaller and the seas higher than today.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I agree. Statistics are lies and science is the enemy.
We need to fight this anti-capitalist socialist encroachment by eliminating all traces of science from our nation. We must ban science from the classroom from tomorrow. It's nothing less than child-abuse to expose innocent young minds to science. Next all military and other government funding of any projects in any way science related must be cut off immediately! Finally we should impose an additional tax burden on any company spending share-holders money on science related R&D. Make them see sense!
Only in this way can we stop icebergs from melting and save the world from communism. Listen to common sense, you know it's RIGHT!
Healthcare prices being on a steady increase since before Obama took office, and actual increases are going down, clearly, it's Obama's fault, and those insurance companies were just preparing for when Obama got elected.
Well maybe if the system was all greed based corporate health care, it wouldn't cost so much, but noooo thanks to *conservatism* everything under the sun costs and arm and a leg and is only available to the privileged classes. The system is already rigged to be expensive, and it wasn't liberal ideology that go us there, it was greed.
People need lots of things. I'm glad you were here to teach me the error of my ways, I should abandon this idea of providing for myself. I'll sit back while guys with guns take my things and give them away and mandate how I use what I have left. Going on the dole is looking better and better, maybe I'll just give up and you can take care of me.
I will send you the bill then, OK? Extorting money from me is not a petty matter to me.
You can track the rapid increase in the cost of healthcare right back to the HMO act of '68 and when it pumped medicare into the same HMO style managements. That by the way was the brainchild of Senator Ted Kennedy and other liberal do-good'rs, not conservative or conservatism.
It is the same problem with the cost of college increasing by leaps and bounds if you want to get a clue. Here is a hint, that has nothing to do with conservatism either.
It's simple - when you force millions of people to buy something, the price goes up. Economics. And the wealth gap between the young and old grows to a new record.
Can we warn them about misrepresenting what somebody else said by distorting their words into a strawman of a sound-bite?
About twelve years too late, but it won't hurt to try again.
Thank you for continuing to demonstrate the accuracy of the true point being made there though, it's a warning you don't want us to hear, but it's true.
there is a yin to every yang.
If you believe that, you're on the wrong site, this isn't the blaze.
$275,000 per new recipient? They're not all getting liver transplants.
Where do you people come up with these arbitrary numbers.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Sorry. Try again. The HMO act of 1968, while hardly perfect and starting a cascade of ugly things was pushed through because health care costs were large and accelerating. Before the concept of HMOs.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And that "alarming" measurement was on a volcano that emits CO2. It's unfortunate that most climate science isn't science. There IS something going on, something very subtle, but it's nearly impossible to any real understanding of it because there is so much politics.
Most everything published on the topic isn't just slanted, it's so ridiculously off to one side or another that's it's useless. I mean seriously, you take your "atmospheric" CO2 measurements on a volcano? That's not even acceptable by propaganda standards. Baghdad Bob would laugh at you and suggest that somewhere in the desert or sea would be much more believable, just do it a 200 miles downwind of Los Angeles.
Don't forget one of the most important promises: to make bills available for a week publicly online before signing them. That went away almost as fast as the ban on lobbyists in his cabinet.
And yes, I bitched about W's similar backpedals.
No, it wasn't "the same so-called scientists," it was a couple of guys who were out of the mainstream, although it got some sensationalist play in the mainstream media. Even back then, the consensus favored warming due to CO2 release, although there was a lot more uncertainty about how much. Anybody who cares about facts rather than propaganda can easily verify this for themselves--the original scientific literature of the time is available in any major university library and much of it, or at least the abstracts, is available online.
Fuck you too.
We get Nixon Care, destruction of the war powers act, masspionage, expansion of Afghanistan, war on the press, war on whistleblowers, war on due process -- Obama is the most evil shit president we've had. It's unbelievable.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Obligatory XKCD
/. to reference the whole Time series as Obligatory XKCD.
I think I'm the first on
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Yep, that's the Slashdot we all know. Reporting things 11 years after the fact.
Next thing you know some fool's gonna be writing a book about WWII. Egads!
The only 400 reading publicized was here on Slashdot a few weeks ago. The measurement was from atop Mauna Lua - a volcano that emits CO2 constantly. You'll note that the defender below acknowledges that fact while saying it's okay because the person who did the reading edited the data to come up with the 400 estimate.
That's seriously the best "defense" - "it's okay, we cooked the data to say 400 because we think that's what it might have been if we weren't on a volcano."
If you follow either link there is a graph showing data from other sites and Mauna Loa's readings perfectly align with them.
Think about this another way... if the results were skewed by the volcano it could be fairly easily proven and that scientist would get a lot of publicity. It is not for want of trying. But the fact is that the effects are known and accounted for and in the second link you can see someone actually studying the CO2 outgassing of the volcano.
There are many thousands of scientist around the world studying this topic. If there were big holes in the theory then the denier community would make sure that people knew about it. But there is not, their responses are mostly wrapped in ignorance of the science.
And the science is not all built on one single data point (eg atmospheric temperatures) but instead a wealth of data, all of which supports that CO2 is rising, that human activity is the major contributor and that there are effects on the climate.
They're not reporting the fact that Larsen B broke up because it was well reported at the time. I saw pictures. This post is reporting the results of a just published study of why it broke up as it did.
Yea science, seems slashdot comments are far too concerned with opinions and politics instead of science, facts, and, well evidence. Which, btw, this is actually big chunk of.
there is no such thing as man made "climate change" (they had to change the name since the warming wasn't happening).
No, "climate change" has been around since at least 1970 as shown in an October 1970 paper by George Benton titled "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change"
Here we go again. Tell me then, what's your own personal definition of science that's better than the one the scientists and the dictionary uses?
There was a major report on the topic sent to President Johnson.
OK, somebody fill me in, here...
3,000 "lakes" on an ice shelf that they state was 2700km^2?
That's a little over a thousand square miles. That's about the land area of Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is.
3,000 "lakes?" Lolwut? You mean "ponds?" Perhaps "puddles?"
Somebody convince me that I should be runnin' to the hills, because I'm just not feelin' it, here...
---------------------------------------
Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
Oh okay, I'm it's perfectly objective, then. As long as the guys trying to get evidence of increased CO2 are admittedly excluding 15% of daily data, it's a perfectly objective source. Or you could report readings that AREN'T on top of a giant CO2 vent. Seriously, you have to REALLY want to believe them if you need to pretend that's credible. Don't you have any interest at all in knowing what's actually going on? I can sort of understand fandom, though I prefer intellectual honesty. Even hardcore sports fans WATCH THE GAME to find out what happened, though. They don't just pretend their team won.
I don't really think you're justified in attacking the character and reputation of the scientists, as despite your claims to the contrary you have completely closed your mind to any facts that violate your "beliefs". You don't prefer intellectual honesty, you prefer to spout half-truths. To wit:
As others have pointed out, they get extremely consistent readings all day and most of the night, except when a temperature inversion when the readings go up. Then they DELETE THOSE RECORDS. If they wanted to get evidence of increased CO2, according to your model they would leave those in. Their readings are consistent with other monitoring stations. Are they all secretly conspiring to push the number up?
I'd suggest you reconsider posting inconsistent and poorly thought out posts on science, here or anywhere else, especially those embellished with attacks on people's character.
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
Indeed, 30 by 30 kilometres is already 900 km^2, 1/3 of 2700 km^2. Should I be all that concerned about any 30 x 30 km^2 area in a wilderness? I'm not so sure.
Almost everyone here says that Slashdot was so much better ten years ago. Now, the editors listened.
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Since this wasn't the scheme that Obama wanted, and this is the "compromise" that the Republicans would accept, this is absolutely NOT Obama's fault, but the fault of the Republicans.
(...) The earth is hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years old, and they take data for a few decades and call it a trend. (...)
You just made my spit out my coffee! Thank you for the biggest laugh i've had in a long, long time.
So when you're forced by need to drive to work to buy a car, the price goes up?!?!?!?
Seriously, your brain is entirely fucked up by your randian bullshit.
It's call Supply & Demand. It's not Randian bullshit, it's economics 101. You ignorance and gut-feelings don't trump reality.
A certain saber-toothed squirrel tried to insert an acorn into the ice.
We got a bitchin' song about it by British Sea Power.
Conclusory, political, non-factual statements included in this article. I have lost all respect for Nature.
You must have never dealt with any environmental data, then, to think that the data is not "edited". Of course it must be edited, because the point isn't to measure the necessarily local variations! What they want to measure is a proxy for the global CO2 concentration, they must be processing the data appropriately to reject the local variations that have known and well understood sources. It'd be completely stupid of them not to do so! Heck, if they didn't do that, you'd be kicking and screaming that they are using data points that are "known bad". You are a troll, I agree with the moderators.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
>. Then they DELETE THOSE RECORDS. If they wanted to get evidence of increased CO2, according to your model they would leave those in.
They chose to delete 15% of the readings.
They could have used to same explanation to delete 12% or 18% and ended up with any result they wanted. That is, from what they said, they chose to delete only the ones that were WAY over the top, but leave in the ones that were "only" 30% higher than average. That doesn't inspire confidence.
> Their readings are consistent with other monitoring stations.
I've seen the Mauna Lua estimate cited many times. I've never seen a consistent reading from any other station cited. Do you have a citation for that? Preferably a sensor that's not inside the smokestack of a Chinese foundry?
Hey professor, did you know that for any curve you can always find a section short enough to approximate a straight line? In the 1600's some maths geniuses built a whole branch of maths from that 'trick' and called it calculus.
Also did you know the best estimates for sea level rise come with rather large error bars which IIRC range from about 20cm to 800cm by the year 2100. The reason for the large error bars is that people who have spent their lives studying this have much less certainty about the shape of the curve than you do. That cautious approach by the "experts" is genuine skeptcisim, fought out in the journals as it should be. Picking a figure at either end of the range and representing it as the "most likely scenario" is simply dishonest.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Who needs facts when we can engage in massive hyperbole? Obama's nothing special. He ain't great. He's failed to change things that needed to change since Bush. A lot of the stuff you're complaining about is simply a continuation of existing policies or slight expansion. I'm not happy about it, but let's not pretend that he's some sort of Hitler, seizing power and single-handedly changing the shape and function of our government. Hardly. Get over yourself.
Why haven't these offtopic trolls been modded down??? Jesus, asshats, go back to 4chan and leave us nerds alone.
And he raised the price of healthcare, then forced me to buy it! Gee, thanks, I think. Looking forward to longer lines, and further subsidizing baby boomers who are far richer than I will ever be. Forward!
He raised the price of healthcare? Seems to me healthcare was going up year after year even before any of this. This just gives the insurance companies a convenient excuse to jack up rates, sometimes even more than usual, and then say "hey, wasn't our fault" while they pocket the increased profits. They finally have a scapegoat for their greed and they are exploiting it. That's not Obama's fault, that is your for-profit insurance company's fault. My insurance company (BCBS michigan) is a non-profit insurance company. This year (when the first of the Obamacare changes started to take effect) our increases were actually smaller than most of the previous 5 years, and so far it's looking like next year shouldn't be too bad either. Amazing, isn't it, that when you have a for-profit insurer, you see large increases, and when you have a non-profit insurer, the increases are minimal. Actually, it's not that amazing at all.
Healthcare was rising, by my paystub, at 1% year on year. This year... 6%. And the plan services were weakened. This is not a good thing.
Also give me money!
Yes, they did. They said they disregarded 15% of the days. They selected 15% as opposed to 14% or 18%, which would have given different results.
Prove it? You think they were lying? They said they disregarded 15% of the days. They selected 15% as opposed to 14% or 18%, which would have given different results. The data is there if you want to calculate it for different values than the 15% they chose.
Prove it? You think they were lying? They said they disregarded 15% of the days. They selected 15% as opposed to 14% or 18%, which would have given different results. The data is there if you want to calculate it for different values than the 15% they chose.
the freedom to sponge off of everyone else like a self-entitled parasite, don't you, son.
the watered it down and then refused to vote on that they agreed to. It only goes to show that you should not bother negotiating with people like you, since you are inherently dishonest.
Larsen not Larson. This isn't the first time I've seen these two names widely mixed up, only this time it's not widely, just timothy.
FC Closer
That's because Republicans are just like Lucy with her football. Don't know why Democrats keep playing that game. They keep expecting a different outcome, just like Charlie Brown.
millions of people who need it and wouldn't otherwise be able to get it.
That's YOUR problem, not mine. If you want to help those that need stuff and can't get it otherwise, then you'll have to fork over out of your own pocket, not mine. The fact that you have to threaten people with imprisonment and violence to get them to give to your "social good" deeds is very telling.
The truth is, without a large nanny state, people will still be fine. Charity will flourish, and the ONLY people losing out are government employees who have evolved a giant, wasteful ecosystem of largely non-functional processes.
Yes of course they need to disregard some of the data from this particular station, which is the problem with this monitoring station. In the sample graph on the page, they chose to include the 4:30 AM reading, which looks like it may well be part of the volcanic breeze. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's entirely subjective whether or not you want to include that.
Subjective massaging of data like that represents the person's OPINION, not an objective measurement.
Yes of course they need to disregard some of the data from this particular station, which is the problem with this monitoring station. In the sample graph on the page, they chose to include the 4:30 AM reading, which looks like it may well be part of the volcanic breeze. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It's entirely subjective whether or not you want to include that.
Subjective massaging of data like that represents the person's OPINION, not an objective measurement.
What part of
These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.”
don't you understand?
And, given that it comes up with the same results as all the other measurements we have, what is your problem?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
According to the stats I've ready, your health care costs were rising exceptionally slowly. According to the New York Times, during the Bush years health care costs rose between 6.2% and 9.7% annually. Since 2008, that rate has slowed to around 3.9% (the lowest rate since the 1960s). So it looks like if your costs were rising only 1% year on year, your health care plan probably wasn't sustainable.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
We WILL be playing kickball on the tundra of Antarctica in the coming years, as the other continents will become too hot to be habitable for humans...
Sent from the future
The problem with a lot of scientist, is they are non believers in god,
If you could define God, predict, test, anything with God, then maybe it would have something to do with science. Otherwise you're just replacing 'I don't know' with 'God did it'. Science says, here are some observations we have made. Here's a theory to explain these observations.
Starvation is everyone's problem. Capitalism is just an economic system. Regardless of what Ayn Rand may have told you in her nonsensical and contrived books, there is no moral basis behind it. It's just one way to run an economy that works reasonably well for some things but very poorly for others.
The truth is, without a large nanny state, people will still be fine. Charity will flourish, and the ONLY people losing out are government employees who have evolved a giant, wasteful ecosystem of largely non-functional processes.
Turns out health care costs less and has better outcomes in countries where it's funded entirely by taxpayers.
OMG BUT EMERGENCY ROOM WAIT TIMES
Turns out that if there's a bad wait time at an ER in a country where they have socialized medicine, you can go to a competing hospital, just like you can here. Only difference is that it won't drive you into bankruptcy. Outcomes are still better in other countries.
The fact that you have to threaten people with imprisonment and violence to get them to give to your "social good" deeds is very telling.
The fact that the threat of violence and jail time are required to get you to do good deeds is very telling. You're most likely the sort of person who treats people who work in the service industry as lower life forms. Your logic most likely goes something like this:
If someone is rich, they must have worked hard, so they deserve to be rich. We know they deserve to be rich, because you get rich by working hard, and they're rich, so clearly they worked hard. If someone is poor, they deserve to be poor, because they are lazy. We know that laziness results in poverty because poor people are all lazy, and we know this because laziness results in poverty. If someone claims that there is a hard working poor person, we know that this is false because hard work makes you rich, and if they are poor, they must be lazy. Likewise, if someone was born into money, they must be a hard worker, because they have money. If they were lazy, it would be impossible for them to be born into money, because laziness makes you poor. If everyone worked hard, everyone would be multimillionaires.
Charity will flourish
Unsubstantiated claim is unsubstantiated. Are you prepared to present evidence that a) there will be more charity, and b) that charity will be sufficient to cover health care?
It's telling that the only way someone can argue against this is by using strawmen.
Turns out that people who don't have enough money to be able to afford it aren't penalized for not buying it, and in fact get a subsidy.
But keep repeating what you said over and over again. Your lies are great for convincing people to hate the health care bill without understanding it, which I'm sure is useful to whatever amoral political view you're trying to push.
Turns out in countries where the government pays for all of health care, the total cost is lower than here in the US, and the outcomes are better.
Kind of blows a gigantic hole in your argument.
> What part of
> > These periods of elevated and variable CO2 levels are so different from the typical measurements that is easy to >
> > remove them from the final data set using a simple mathematical “filter.”
> don't you understand?
What part of 4:30 AM don't you understand? It's right there int he subject line.
If you look at the data, 4:30 NOT "so different from" 4:00 AM or 5:00 AM that there's any objective reason to include one and exclude the other. As it happens, these readings that entirely subjective, like 4:30 AM, are precisely the peak readings people are getting excited about.
> And, given that it comes up with the same results as all the other measurements we have, what is your problem?
I've been asking and asking for citations to any other similar result. Dozens of people have replied to those posts, but not one has cited a single measurement, anywhere in the world, even in the middle of LA, with readings anywhere NEAR that high. I just checked the reading in downtown Houston, TX, one of the country's dirtiest cities. It's 0.2 ppm. These guys are claiming overall atmospheric C02 of 400 ppm.
So according to them, Houston has air 2000 times cleaner than the atmosphere is general. I call bullshit. If you know of any other readings coming anywhere near 400, cite them. Since you don't, you just thought that's what Jon Stewart said, stop repeating it. It's bull. 2000X bull.
Starvation is everyone's problem. Capitalism is just an economic system. Regardless of what Ayn Rand may have told you in her nonsensical and contrived books, there is no moral basis behind it. It's just one way to run an economy that works reasonably well for some things but very poorly for others.
I never said capitalism had a moral basis behind it. What I will say is that it has a better moral standing than coercive government systems, which almost always boil down to some form of mob-rule at their core. Also, I have no idea why you're bringing up capitalism, as I never mentioned it in my post. And I've never read Ayn Rand, but don't let that stop you from justifying your anger towards me.
Turns out health care costs less and has better outcomes in countries where it's funded entirely by taxpayers.
Sure, that may be true. But we're not arguing efficiency, as you brought up the moral basis of things in your first few lines: Collective pooling of resources is only moral if you have the active consent of all parties, free from manipulation and coercion.
OMG BUT EMERGENCY ROOM WAIT TIMES
Turns out that if there's a bad wait time at an ER in a country where they have socialized medicine, you can go to a competing hospital, just like you can here. Only difference is that it won't drive you into bankruptcy. Outcomes are still better in other countries.
Yes, but none of the different hospitals have any monetary incentive to improve on those response times in reaction to your decisions not to use them. Sure, there may be social and moral incentives by the individuals running those hospitals to improve, but as an institution that may well be drowned out.
The fact that the threat of violence and jail time are required to get you to do good deeds is very telling. You're most likely the sort of person who treats people who work in the service industry as lower life forms.
If it was not necessary, then it wouldn't be the norm. However, saying that it's necessary to get even "me" to do good deeds is telling of the kind of morals you have. You're perfectly okay talking about "moral basis", but when it comes down to the fundamental moral issue of freedom, you switch around and claim that my wishes do not matter, and that it's perfectly okay to use the threat of violence and jail time to make me do good deeds. Good deeds being whatever you and the majority deem is "good".
Your logic most likely goes something like this:
If someone is rich, they must have worked hard, so they deserve to be rich. We know they deserve to be rich, because you get rich by working hard, and they're rich, so clearly they worked hard. If someone is poor, they deserve to be poor, because they are lazy. We know that laziness results in poverty because poor people are all lazy, and we know this because laziness results in poverty. If someone claims that there is a hard working poor person, we know that this is false because hard work makes you rich, and if they are poor, they must be lazy. Likewise, if someone was born into money, they must be a hard worker, because they have money. If they were lazy, it would be impossible for them to be born into money, because laziness makes you poor. If everyone worked hard, everyone would be multimillionaires.
I made no such argument, you must be mistaking me with someone else. However, I'll bite. You seem to think that I have some sort of leap in logic from poor/rich to deserving/not-deserving. On the contrary, I think that people have a moral and natural right of ownership over themselves, and the product of their labor. If they choose to be lazy, that is their choice. If they work hard, or they are lazy makes no difference. The main point is that no one has any right over another person's labor without mutually agreed compensation without coercion.
And I've never read Ayn Rand, but don't let that stop you from justifying your anger towards me.
Perhaps you haven't, but the things you said line right up with her philosophy, so it wasn't much of a leap. It's entirely possible that you came by these views in some other way, but most likely the people you have read or spoken to about them were strongly influenced by her.
Sure, that may be true. But we're not arguing efficiency, as you brought up the moral basis of things in your first few lines: Collective pooling of resources is only moral if you have the active consent of all parties, free from manipulation and coercion.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that manipulation and coercion can't take place when two people agree to a capitalist contract. The reality of a capitalist economy is that when you have a large disparity in wealth, the person who can afford to wait the other person out has much more control over the terms of the contract. As such, the value of the contract isn't the value that a person can provide, but rather the value the absolute lowest value that the person with the negotiating advantage can get away with. That may be how contracts are, but there is absolutely no moral basis for it, since the amount of money the person at a disadvantage gets paid is inversely proportional to how much they need the money to live.
You might be tempted to say that competition somehow cancels out this effect, but in reality, we can see that this isn't actually true. It may spread it out somewhat, but as someone paying employees, you know that the less you (and other people in a similar position) pay those employees and the fewer employees you hire, the more desperate people will be for jobs, the more hours they'll be willing to work, and the more willing they'll be to work for less money. So what these people are ultimately paid is the absolute lowest the employer can get away with, independent of the actual value they provide to the employer. Things would be different if the people doing the hiring didn't already hold all the cards.
The point here is that if someone is starving and desperate, a contract between them and someone who isn't starving and desperate is pretty much coercive by definition. There simply aren't enough non-coercive contracts to satisfy peoples' need for jobs, so most people get stuck in a shitty position getting paid far less than the "fruits of their labor" that they have, as you said, a moral right to. Coercion is inherent to pure capitalism, much in the same way it's inherent to every other type of economy, because the people with the most power will always be using whatever means at their disposal to coerce everyone else. In practice, you need to moderate things to some extent by, dare I say, applying coercion in the opposite direction so as to make sure the people in the worst negotiation positions have at least a little bit of power of their contracts.
This is one reason why the Republicans are so desperately against taxpayer funded health care. If people aren't constantly declaring medical bankruptcy, if they're not desperate to take the first job they can find just so they can get a tiny amount of shitty health insurance, the balance of power shifts slightly and now workers can afford to wait and shop around a bit longer so they can get fairer contracts. Most of what the Republicans do is geared toward keeping wages as low as possible, and a social safety net (for the reasons I stated) tends to correlate with higher wages. And somehow companies in countries where wages are higher manage to survive and even flourish.
I'm not sure if you're going to ask the Straw Question, but if you don't, someone else will:
So what you're saying is that we should just raise taxes to 100% and have the government take care of everyone?
No, of course not, because that works even worse than pure capitalism does. What I'm saying is that real-world data indicates that there's a happy me
Statistics are often always skewed to suit the speaker at hand.
There are plenty of ways to adjust the cost of something the government provides to make it higher or lower or whatever you want.
'Health Care' is FAR to broad to quantify.
Congratulations, you've bought into the bullshit because they've talked you into a circle of misunderstanding.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'm not happy about it, but let's not pretend that he's some sort of Hitler, seizing power and single-handedly changing the shape and function of our government. Hardly.
Why shouldn't we? Is that not exactly what Obama supporters did leading up to his election in reference to Bush? $10 says you were one of those very people.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Do you have any specific evidence to counter these statistics, or is "LA LA LA THE STATISTICS ARE BEING MANIPULATED BECAUSE ITS THE GOVERNMENT AND ALL GOVERNMENT IS BAD THEREFORE THE STATISTICS MUST BE MANIPULATED" the entirety of your argument?
Perhaps someone has written a paper somewhere picking them apart? I'd love to see it. Maybe it'll even sway my opinion. I'm not so dogmatic about this stuff that I'm not open to new evidence; it's just that people don't seem to be able to put up anything remotely credible.
I wasn't happy with Bush, but I found some of the liberal hatred for him to be extreme and more than a bit distasteful. I'm also really unhappy with Obama's compromises with Obamacare (which could have been a great savior for healthcare in this country and may now be the opposite) and his willingness to continue to expand drone strikes and spying. However, I don't see him or Bush for the matter as maniacal dictators bent on destroying this country. I see them as victims of a system that has become too powerful and too interested in things that either don't matter for the little guy or are actively harmful to the little guy. And I must recognize the good that's been done in any case. It's easy to see the world as a shithole and to hate everything. It's harder to recognize good and good enough in grayish mess we live in.
I've been asking and asking for citations to any other similar result.
Well, just looking at the page I pointed out to you you can see the graphs for Barrow, Samoa and the South Pole.
Actual numbers can be found at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-keel-flask/sio-keel-flasksam.html
Dozens of people have replied to those posts, but not one has cited a single measurement, anywhere in the world, even in the middle of LA, with readings anywhere NEAR that high. I just checked the reading in downtown Houston, TX, one of the country's dirtiest cities. It's 0.2 ppm. These guys are claiming overall atmospheric C02 of 400 ppm.
WTF? Where the hell do you get 0.2 ppm CO2? Source?
Just quickly looking around the web I can find papers like Elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature across an urban-rural transect
Which includes the gem:
In Phoenix, USA CO2 concentration was monitored for nearly a year and values ranged from a daily minimum of 390 ppm rising to a daily maximum of 491 ppm, although a maximum value of 619 ppm was attained (Idso et al., 2002).
619 ppm in 2002 in Phoenix good enough for you?
Looks like your Houston figure is dodgy. Confusing CO with CO2 maybe?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Thanks for the citation. Yeah I had a moment of going to 57 states there with CO vs CO2. I realized that just after posting it and hoped this thread was dead enough that no-one would read it.
See what I mean about 4:30, for example? I don't see any objective reason to include those high readings on either side of a volcano event. For many of the highest readings, it's just not clear if that's the beginning of the breeze shifting to include the volcanic CO2 or not.
I suppose to be on the safe side, one could exclude an hour on either side of the part that's obviously volcanic. If you do that, it excludes a lot of high readings and gives a different result. The readings you provided from other places help. I'm assuming those other places aren't also active volcanos!
What makes everyone think that ice at the poles is normal on this planet? Research indicates that our entire planet was once extremely hot and humid. Then, an ice age caused the sea water to drop dramatically as much of the water was deposited at the poles, revealing land and land bridges that were once under water.
It has finally thawed to the point where the environment is returning to normal and you have fools whining about climate change.
Stupid humans: they believe that their actions actually register as anything more than a tiny spike on a graph in the vast history of this planet.
His "Health care program" is a trojan horse to implement draconian tracking policies. Health care has been so poorly handled all over the world anyways that no universal program will ever be successful.. The CAbnadian system could have been the best if it hadn't been co0-opted by the big drug companies, who saw an easy buck in draining the canadian tax coffers with outrageous charges for covered prescriptions. In order to pay the drug companies, the government has gutted our hospitals, our medical plans coverage, and anywhere else they can other than drug costs. The system is now a wreck because of that. There is simply no way the US could avoid the same fate, but using employers the way they've done is absurd. They should have instead MANDATED that nobody could be refused health care. Costs a lot? Sure. but if they keep the drug companies out of it , and require *reasons* for a battery of expensive tests, instead of meekly paying for them all the time, they;'d save multiple billions. It'as too late for us here.. the politicians are fully bought and paid for by the drug companies, not in the way your US politicians get compromised, but it's just as effective how they do it here, just different. If there had been Big Pharma in Shakespeare's time, "First shoot all the lawyers" would not have been the line.. they would undoubtedly have come second though ;-)
Icebergs? I knew the Jews were behind it.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Funny, Medicare is always taken to be the lowest cost insurer around, and everybody has to buy it. And on top of that it's the segment of US health care with the best outcomes, even compared to the other industrialized countries.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
more evidence keeps coming in ; people pushing climate change have some other agenda, but not truth ;
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/08/13/weather-station-closures-flaws-in-temperature-record/
20,000 years ago was when the climate began to warm in Antarctica. It took quite a while for the ice to melt, the atmospheric temperatures to exceed today's. Several thousand years after that the seas began to rise. Whether it was 13,000, 17,000, 11,000 years ago is irrelevant. It happened. It was long ago before the age of modern history, before the age of carbon fuels, and the Earth was warmer, wetter, the glaciers smaller, the seas higher than now. And it was "natural". That's the science and it's not debatable.
The natural course is to return to glaciation as the Earth's orbit moves away from this climactic optimum for Men. That's the science and not debatable either. The Warmists would have you believe that this is a desirable end. Maybe it is - certainly it would be "natural" for mile-high glaciers to sweep all of the US Eastern Seaboard into the sea again leaving no record of Man's presence there. I wouldn't miss New York.
I live too far North to welcome it though. The glaciers would come for me too, and scrape my house into the sea. I would quite prefer that Man altered his environment in such a way as to prevent a recurrence of this dire fate. Luckily for me, that seems to be the plan.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The outcomes are not better. It's a matter of differences in reporting. For instance, it is said that Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate then the US. But when we look at it, we find that the US brings to term more at risk fetuses then Cuba and Cuba more or less abort them by not implementing the level of care just before delivery. The international statistics only require a live birth to be reported if it is over X amount of weight or alive longer then 48 hours. So if the baby is premature and dies before 48 hours, it doesn't count against the infant mortality rate as collected by the WHO.
As for the costs of health care, you are missing an important part. It isn't where the government pays for health care, it is where the government provides it. The difference is being owner of the system and paying an outside system to accomplish the same thing. Of course this would be the most efficient in the US if we could trust the government departments to not become riddled with waste and graft but that is a problem the US cannot seem to shake.
The costs of the US health care rose when the government got involved and started paying with no questions asked. That happened with the creation of medicare. The HMO act started increasing this rate of increase because it allowed non-licensed agents to override the medical decisions of doctors and nurses. At first, it was a matter of procedures being performed as a necessity and some suit with no medical degree saying you didn't have to do that, we aren't paying. To to recover costs, hospitals and health care providers increased the costs of everything knowing only about 2/3rds of the bill could be realistically recovered. Then through a variety of other laws designed to help pay for medicare and medicaid, the government started doing only partial reimbursements so the costs needed to be raised so that 80% of the total bill would cover 100% of what was expected.
The Medicare payments also move on a expected cost sheet where the government divides the country up into cost of living categories and then assumed the average cost of the procedures in those areas. For instance, a heart attack in Mississippi would cost less then a heart attack in New York- so the percentage of payment awarded is less in Mississippi. But what this created is an incentive to increase costs artificially where the more the average cost was the more that would be reimbursed. The savior to this was the HMO act where they are allowed to count discounted medical bills as full cost in reporting for the average. So a hospital that would charge $100 for 3 stitches could still charge that amount to insurance companies but if they charged $200 to people without insurance, then the average for medicare would use the $200 value even though 80% of their patients have to pay half that much. Before that happened, the costs had to be realistic to the market for reimbursement which is close to where other countries who have nationalized health care (own the facilities and providers) is at.
That was a refreshingly well informed and interesting post. Most of the opposition to Obamacare that I see around here seems to be knee-jerk anti-government sentiment.
Honestly, I think part of what causes this kind of crap is our electoral system that essentially locks the two major parties into power and turns campaign contributions (rather than the desire of voters) into their main incentive. In order to win elections in the US, all you have to do is be slightly more appealing than the other party, since if you vote third party, you're not voting for one of the two viable parties, and you thus risk having your last choice win the election. And even if enough people can be convinced to vote for a third party, that party will just supplant one of the big two, and will eventually become corrupt as money is dumped into it from the outside. The only way to fix this would be to fundamentally alter the electoral system, but I'm not sure that's possible from a practical standpoint. There would be far too much resistance.
I think one of the major problems is that the US was never intended to be a monolithic top down model as so many people seem to think it needs to be today. The States is where the politicians need to consider the needs and wants of the people. The federal government outside of post offices, post roads and military, it largely an intermediate government that represents the states to the rest of the world. They regulate Interstate Commerce but constitutionally the intent was more about making trade among the states reasonable and fair instead of this idea of unlimited power if someone could marginally impact trade.
Originally, the three branches of government were designed to represent the major components of the US. The senate originally represented the state itself. This is reflected by the senators originally being selected from state legislators and appointed by the governors of the states. The house of representatives represented the people of the states and the Presidency represented the people of the nation. The idea was that each party had a dog in the fight, the people in their local settings, the states as a whole, and the country as a whole.
That has morphed into a serve me and serve me now mechanism that leads to a lot of the strife and dismay that you express. It is also something that has accelerated the bastardization and outright ignoring of the US constitution which has been going on for quite some time. Political parties is part of the problem, but expecting the government to be something it wasn't intended to be is also a key to the problem. Before any electoral system is altered, it would be wise to alter the intent of the government and document it in something solid like a constitution. Only then will what I think you are after will be reasonably achievable.