Or acid rain messed up the growth of your trees in the area. Or the lack of salmon runs have cut the nutrient input to the forests (yes, bears eating spawned salmon have been a major source of nutrients for the trees. Or???
Your example listed one thermometer. But what if there are hundreds of thermometers. Thermocouples, mercury, made by multiple manufactures, distributed over a wide area. What if there is satellite temperature data? What if multiple other temperature proxies all synced up with the instrumental temperature readings? What if all of those different sources of data all pointed to a single temperature trend. And then a single temperature proxy such as tree-ring measurements disagreed with those temperatures. And only over a limited area and a limited time. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that something weird is happening to the trees.
Most of the noise made by the science denying lobby about the "stolen emails" is completely irrelevant to the real scientific questions. The purpose of the noise generated by the pseudo-skeptics has little to do with actual scientific arguments and everything to do with undermining trust in the public for the field of science. The arguments about "tricks" used to "mask" declines are based on quotes out of context, as explained here. Basically, tree ring temperature proxies started diverging from instrumental temperatures in the early 1960's, with the tree ring proxy data showing declining temperatures in spite of the fact that the temperatures as measured by thermometers was rising.
The simple fact is that the public's trust in scientists has absolutely nothing to do with the actual validity of the science. Nothing. However, the efforts at "vandalism" of the body of public knowledge perpetrated by the oil lobby will likely do long term damage to the scientific institutions that our society has long relied on and benefited from over the past decades.
On reading many of these posts that show up whenever climate change is mentioned, I am reminded of the following article, which I will quote below in its entirety. I found it in Scientific American.
War Is Peace: Can Science Fight Media Disinformation?
In the 24/7 Internet world, people make lots of claims. Science provides a guide for testing them
By Lawrence M. Krauss
When I saw the statement repeated online that theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge would be dead by now if he lived in the U.K. and had to depend on the National Health Service (he, of course, is alive and working in the U.K., where he always has), I reflected on something I had written a dozen years ago, in one of my first published commentaries:
“The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling. Our democratic society is imperiled as much by this as any other single threat, regardless of whether the origins of the nonsense are religious fanaticism, simple ignorance or personal gain.”
As I listen to the manifest nonsense that has been promulgated by the likes of right-wing fanatic radio hosts and moronic ex-governors in response to the effort to bring the U.S. into alignment with other industrial countries in providing reasonable and affordable health care for all its citizens, it seems that things have only gotten worse in the years since I first wrote those words.
English novelist George Orwell was remarkably prescient about many things, and one of the most disturbing aspects of his masterpiece 1984 involved the blatant perversion of objective reality, using constant repetition of propaganda by a militaristic government in control of all the media.
Centrally coordinated and fully effective reinvention of reality has not yet come about in the U.S. (even though a White House aide in the past administration came chillingly close when he said to a New York Times reporter, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality”). I am concerned, however that something equally pernicious, at least to the free exercise of democracy, has.
The rise of a ubiquitous Internet, along with 24-hour news channels has, in some sense, had the opposite effect from what many might have hoped such free and open access to information would have had. It has instead provided free and open access, without the traditional media filters, to a barrage of disinformation. Nonsense claims had more difficulty gaining traction in the days when print journalism held sway and newspaper editors had the final word on what made its way into homes and when television news consisted of a half-hour summary of what a trained producer thought were the most essential stories of the day.
Now fabrications about “death panels” and oxymoronic claims that ”government needs to keep its hands off of Medicare” flow freely on the Internet, driving thousands of zombielike protesters to Washington to argue that access to health care will undermine their fundamental freedom to have their insurance canceled if they get sick. And 24-hour news channels, desperate to provide ”breaking” coverage at all hours, end up serving as public relations vehicles for any celebrity who happens to make an outrageous claim or, worse, decide that the competition for ratings requires them to be anything but ”fair and balanced” in their reporting.
“Fair and balanced,” however, doesn’t mean putting all viewpoints, regardless of their underlying logic or validity, on an equal footing. Discerning the merits of competing claims is where the empirical basis of science should play a role. I cannot stress often enough that what science is all about is not proving things to be true but proving them to be false. What fails the test of empirical reality, as determined by
I'm sorry, but your views are paranoid and possibly delusional. You really should have a higher standard as to what you adopt as fact. The simple fact is that if there are too many who adopt views similar to the ones you espouse above, our democracy itself will be profoundly threatened.
Voltaire once said that "those who can make people believe absurdities can make them commit atrocities". Judging from the low standard you show in checking your facts, you are likely capable of believing nearly anything. You think your views are somehow rebellious, but in fact they are exactly type of views that the most powerful in society would want you to have. They are based upon ignorance of facts, of science and are devoid of most vestiges of logic and argument. If the "truth shall set you free", then you are enslaved in your imagined freedom to consume.
This is just another sissy-fit thrown by the denier groups that are willing to use any tactics to distract people from the real issue. If there was any substance to these email, they would've produced the evidence by now. A few sentences blown out of context from a few cherry picked emails are merely red-herring.
The parent posting isn't a troll. He is saying it like it is. This "incident" involves four scientists. Just four. And I'm trying to figure out the scientific arguments being put forward by the contrarians. Are they saying that data has been suppressed that shows the world hasn't being warming significantly since the 1970's?!! Really? Thirty five years ago, I used to skate on local lakes...they used to freeze regularly. Those lakes haven't frozen solid for since 1977. Glacial retreat has accelerated since the 1970's...this is undeniable. And this isn't part of the retreat since the last ice age. To assert that the recent glacial melting is somehow part of a linear decline that began 10000 years ago is an absurd claim that can easily be refuted by looking at measures of sea level over the past 10000 years.
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:
Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.
The assertions of the contrarians about these emails are irrelevant to the scientific discussion about climate change. They do not address in any real or logical way the arguments of climate change scientists. They are thus, a clear example of the use of the "Red Herring Falacy".
The movement for the continual reduction of taxes is symptomatic of the decay of our society. It represents a shift from a grand vision of our society as seen through organizations such as NASA to an inward looking consumeristic vision of society where most of our vital energies are spent either producing goods to consume or consuming those goods. It used to be that if you were really smart, you became a rocket scientist. That was where the money was...and the prestige. Now you get a degree in law or business and become an investment banker, and you use your intelligence not to build grand projects, but to figure out ways to pick the pockets of less intelligent investors or to convince consumers to buy useless gadgets that they don't really need.
With our modern obsession with applicability and utility, where nothing seems to mean anything unless it makes money, we need to remember what science really is. Science isn't just a collection of facts. It isn't just an engine of economic growth. Science is above all a method of exposing nonsense for what it is. Science provides a method for anyone to identify truth from nonsense. When a dispute arises over whose assertions about the physical world are correct, we all agree to look to the physical world as the ultimate arbiter of truth, not to a priest, nor a CEO, nor a minister. Science cannot prove truth. It can only disprove nonsense.
If we, as citizens of a democracy, lose the ability to tell nonsense from truth, then our civilization is in trouble.
A system where the government directly controls private corporations? No that's not what the poster was talking about.
The poster seemed to be talking about basing one's ability to vote on one's financial situation. That seems to be a slippery slope on the way to giving the wealthy more formal political power. I would argue that an important characteristic of fascist governments is that they worship power. They give the most wealthy in society a disproportionate amount of power. In a fascist way of thinking, giving the weak in society free money is considered a grave sin. I believe that in many ways, this might be considered a defining characteristic of fascism.
Thus, the poster who proposes that we disenfranchise poor voters is acting in a manner not inconsistent with the behavior of fascist governments, especially the government of Mussolini's Italy.
You know, I used to think this to be too radical to rationally consider in the past, but, the more I think of it, especially in terms of what you mentioned, perhaps it is time to change the laws to prohibit those on the dole from voting. I'd heard it put forth something to the effect of, that a democracy (I know, we're a republic) will only last until the general populace learns to vote itself money from the public coffers. And, I sort of see that here in the US today.
Having read not only TFA, but TFC (the effing comments), here is a fairly informative comment posted to this article from XEagleDriver:
I think the key is that CA is stepping in, legislatively, and attempting to fix a problem that is already on its way out, not a real issue, . . .
Agree with Clint's statement, the table below paints a clearer picture (pun intended) of how CA will be lagging industry's voluntary standards.
Energy Star vs CEC Tier Comparisons
--------------------Energy Star 3.0-----Energy Star 4.0-----CEC Tier 1-----Energy Star 5.0-----CEC Tier 2
Date Implemented In effect now-----------May 2010------------2011----------May 2012------------2013
32" Screen (watts)---120-------------------78-------------------116-------------55------------------75
50" Screen (watts)---353-------------------153------------------245------------108------------------153
NOTES:
Energy Star is a voluntary standard, while CEC is a mandatory CA only requirement.
CONCLUSIONS:
1) CEC Tier 1 will be less restrictive, than the Energy Star 4.0 industry standard which will pre-date Tier 1 implementation.
2) CEC Tier 2 will be less restrictive, than the Energy Star 5.0 industry standard which will pre-date Tier 2 implementation.
Looks like only Energy Star HDTV's will cut the mustard in CA by 2011--no big deal. The rest of the nation will probably already be ahead of these "standards" in the clearly evident move to "green" stuff.
Cheers,
XEagleDriver
In other words, many or most of the current Energy Star certified TV's already satisfy the California requirements. TFA is much ado about nothing.
You are effing delusional! Britain has a public health system. Australia. Canada. France. Japan. Sweden. Norway. South Korea. Germany (WEST and EAST...and West Germany had it BEFORE the wall fell). EVERY MAJOR INDUSTRIALIZED NATION HAS SOME FORM OF A PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM. What don't you understand about this. I feel like I am talking to a scientologist! I stand by what I say. Posters like you are completely delusional. Or perhaps you are getting paid by the pound to post your delusional views.
As I read many of these comments, I am struck by the almost pathological and paranoid fear of government displayed by their writers. It doesn't seem to have any real intellectual basis. It feels like someone has been reading stories about "the government BOOGEEEMAAAN" to these people, and they have internalized it, and don't question it anymore.
Say this after me: "Every major industrialized country in the world has some significant government role in their health care system." And they end up with better health outcomes for LESS MONEY!!
Health care bureaucracies will always exist. In America, our health care bureaucracies are privately run and largely unregulated. The mission statement of our private bureaucracies is to maximize profit. Period. Actual health outcomes are largely irrelevant if they do not overlap with the main purpose of the organization. And so our health bureaucracies will use every trick they can to deny people coverage. They employ some very smart people, whose sole purpose is to deny coverage.
When bureaucracies are government run, or are more tightly regulated, the mission statement changes. It becomes something similar to "maximize patient health". The government bureaucracies can actually become more efficient, because they are given a fixed amount of money, and are then told to maximize health as much as possible. This becomes the main purpose of the organization, and employees know it. They focus their attention on health outcomes. They feel that it is their duty to the public. They will often make due with less pay because they feel their job is so important.
I installed the beta of Kubuntu 9.10 a few days before the final release. It won't mount my windows hard drives. Samba is flakey. Grub takes a long time to load. I'm really close to jumping back to Debian stable, instead of downloading the proper 9.10 version.
United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8. The Congress shall have power...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
Thank you for this quote. As another reply has mentioned, the key word to remember is "limited time". The rights authors gained on their own works were more similar to a lease, rather than outright ownership. One must also understand the underlying attitude behind this passage. There was an assumption that the works of the author were in the end to be public property, but that as a means to an end the writer was granted temporary rights, to encourage the production of more works. These rights were not to be "ownership".
What we have seen recently is a move to a model that is closer to outright ownership. The advent of DRM technology has meant that content "owners" have increasing power to micromanage the usage of their works by the public. This micromanagement is, or has the potential to become a substantial barrier to cultural exchange, which goes against the intentions of the authors of the Constitution. We must remember that it is us, the public, who are the ultimate owners of our culture.
Few people seem to question the implicit goal that companies seem to hold, that profits must always continue to increase forever. Any deviation from this path is seen as a failure. Thus, even though they are raking in enormous profits from theatres and DVD rentals, movie companies must find a way to increase those profits by putting the screws on already profitable business practices such as renting DVD's.
...responsible for the recent push to increase UNILATERAL nuclear disarmament...
Ummm...no. He has reopened negotiations with Russia, which is the only other country with enough nuclear weapons to threaten our survival as a species. Reductions of this sort happen through mutual discussion and trust between the involved countries. Bush junior's neoconservative White House was on a path that would have very likely led to a new nuclear arms race with Russia. They were talking about and starting a process to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. This process would have seen the abandonment of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Missile shields with dubious effectiveness would have increased tension with Russia while not actually providing any real protection (there would be no effective way of distinguishing decoy bombs from real ones).
President Bush reduced the nuclear arsenal by HALF.
I presume you mean Bush Senior. I would hope you would give some credit to President Clinton as well. Bush junior however was pushing to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, and was responsible for putting real nuclear disarmament on the back burner.
...with insane health reforms he might incite the US to civil war...
Are you bloody serious?!!!!!! The current health care system is a vampire on the American economy. We pay more and get less health care than EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION. The overblown rhetoric surrounding this issue is the true symptom of insanity.
From what I understand, Barack Obama is personally responsible for the recent push to increase nuclear disarmament. This is fairly well known in diplomatic circles. I suspect this was a prime reason why he was awarded this prize.
Microsoft does have a tendency to pre-announce "blue sky" projects that never see the light of day. Remember the promised Cairo OS that never came into being? Remember the promised WinFS that never seems to be released? Remember the promises to get rid of the registry? Remember the original promises of release dates for the OS that would eventually become Vista? I could go on and on and on...
If it looks like vaporware and it sounds like vaporware then it probably is vaporware.
Nuclear bombs are relatively easy to build, especially the older first generation fission bombs. It is largely a matter of controlling the neutrons...slowing them down and ensuring that the correct amount of neutrons bond with uranium/plutonium nuclei during a very short period of time. An hydrogen bomb is FAR MORE difficult to build. From what I have read, there is one particular fact/technique that has remained secret. Let's hope it stays that way.
The real difficulty in building a bomb is getting the highly enriched uranium/plutonium. Unfortunately, this particular secret has leaked out, such that both Pakistan and India have been able to use it. In essence, for uranium, the technique bonds four fluorine atoms to one uranium atom to make uranium hexafluoride gas. Centrifuges are then used to separate out the heavier U-238 molecules from the lighter U-235 molecules that are used for the chain reaction. However, this technique still requires an effort on a grand industrial scale. It cannot be done in a tiny desert cave. The facilities to enrich enough uranium to build even one bomb must be very very large, and there is inevitably leakage of tell-tale gas molecules into the atmosphere. These tell-tale leaked isotopes can also be used as a signature for the manufacturer of the uranium...even after the bomb has exploded. Thus they will always be able to tell who was the original bomb maker.
Slashdot Mirror
Or acid rain messed up the growth of your trees in the area. Or the lack of salmon runs have cut the nutrient input to the forests (yes, bears eating spawned salmon have been a major source of nutrients for the trees. Or???
Your example listed one thermometer. But what if there are hundreds of thermometers. Thermocouples, mercury, made by multiple manufactures, distributed over a wide area. What if there is satellite temperature data? What if multiple other temperature proxies all synced up with the instrumental temperature readings? What if all of those different sources of data all pointed to a single temperature trend. And then a single temperature proxy such as tree-ring measurements disagreed with those temperatures. And only over a limited area and a limited time. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that something weird is happening to the trees.
Red Herring. Bad analogy.
The link I provided didn't seem to show up. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P70SlEqX7oY&feature=player_embedded
Most of the noise made by the science denying lobby about the "stolen emails" is completely irrelevant to the real scientific questions. The purpose of the noise generated by the pseudo-skeptics has little to do with actual scientific arguments and everything to do with undermining trust in the public for the field of science. The arguments about "tricks" used to "mask" declines are based on quotes out of context, as explained here. Basically, tree ring temperature proxies started diverging from instrumental temperatures in the early 1960's, with the tree ring proxy data showing declining temperatures in spite of the fact that the temperatures as measured by thermometers was rising.
The simple fact is that the public's trust in scientists has absolutely nothing to do with the actual validity of the science. Nothing. However, the efforts at "vandalism" of the body of public knowledge perpetrated by the oil lobby will likely do long term damage to the scientific institutions that our society has long relied on and benefited from over the past decades.
On reading many of these posts that show up whenever climate change is mentioned, I am reminded of the following article, which I will quote below in its entirety. I found it in Scientific American.
I'm sorry, but your views are paranoid and possibly delusional. You really should have a higher standard as to what you adopt as fact. The simple fact is that if there are too many who adopt views similar to the ones you espouse above, our democracy itself will be profoundly threatened.
Voltaire once said that "those who can make people believe absurdities can make them commit atrocities". Judging from the low standard you show in checking your facts, you are likely capable of believing nearly anything. You think your views are somehow rebellious, but in fact they are exactly type of views that the most powerful in society would want you to have. They are based upon ignorance of facts, of science and are devoid of most vestiges of logic and argument. If the "truth shall set you free", then you are enslaved in your imagined freedom to consume.
The parent posting isn't a troll. He is saying it like it is. This "incident" involves four scientists. Just four. And I'm trying to figure out the scientific arguments being put forward by the contrarians. Are they saying that data has been suppressed that shows the world hasn't being warming significantly since the 1970's?!! Really? Thirty five years ago, I used to skate on local lakes...they used to freeze regularly. Those lakes haven't frozen solid for since 1977. Glacial retreat has accelerated since the 1970's...this is undeniable. And this isn't part of the retreat since the last ice age. To assert that the recent glacial melting is somehow part of a linear decline that began 10000 years ago is an absurd claim that can easily be refuted by looking at measures of sea level over the past 10000 years.
The assertions of the contrarians about these emails are irrelevant to the scientific discussion about climate change. They do not address in any real or logical way the arguments of climate change scientists. They are thus, a clear example of the use of the "Red Herring Falacy".
The movement for the continual reduction of taxes is symptomatic of the decay of our society. It represents a shift from a grand vision of our society as seen through organizations such as NASA to an inward looking consumeristic vision of society where most of our vital energies are spent either producing goods to consume or consuming those goods. It used to be that if you were really smart, you became a rocket scientist. That was where the money was...and the prestige. Now you get a degree in law or business and become an investment banker, and you use your intelligence not to build grand projects, but to figure out ways to pick the pockets of less intelligent investors or to convince consumers to buy useless gadgets that they don't really need.
With our modern obsession with applicability and utility, where nothing seems to mean anything unless it makes money, we need to remember what science really is. Science isn't just a collection of facts. It isn't just an engine of economic growth. Science is above all a method of exposing nonsense for what it is. Science provides a method for anyone to identify truth from nonsense. When a dispute arises over whose assertions about the physical world are correct, we all agree to look to the physical world as the ultimate arbiter of truth, not to a priest, nor a CEO, nor a minister. Science cannot prove truth. It can only disprove nonsense.
If we, as citizens of a democracy, lose the ability to tell nonsense from truth, then our civilization is in trouble.
The poster seemed to be talking about basing one's ability to vote on one's financial situation. That seems to be a slippery slope on the way to giving the wealthy more formal political power. I would argue that an important characteristic of fascist governments is that they worship power. They give the most wealthy in society a disproportionate amount of power. In a fascist way of thinking, giving the weak in society free money is considered a grave sin. I believe that in many ways, this might be considered a defining characteristic of fascism.
Thus, the poster who proposes that we disenfranchise poor voters is acting in a manner not inconsistent with the behavior of fascist governments, especially the government of Mussolini's Italy.
When Fascism comes to America...
Having read not only TFA, but TFC (the effing comments), here is a fairly informative comment posted to this article from XEagleDriver:
In other words, many or most of the current Energy Star certified TV's already satisfy the California requirements. TFA is much ado about nothing.
You are effing delusional! Britain has a public health system. Australia. Canada. France. Japan. Sweden. Norway. South Korea. Germany (WEST and EAST...and West Germany had it BEFORE the wall fell). EVERY MAJOR INDUSTRIALIZED NATION HAS SOME FORM OF A PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM. What don't you understand about this. I feel like I am talking to a scientologist! I stand by what I say. Posters like you are completely delusional. Or perhaps you are getting paid by the pound to post your delusional views.
As I read many of these comments, I am struck by the almost pathological and paranoid fear of government displayed by their writers. It doesn't seem to have any real intellectual basis. It feels like someone has been reading stories about "the government BOOGEEEMAAAN" to these people, and they have internalized it, and don't question it anymore.
Say this after me: "Every major industrialized country in the world has some significant government role in their health care system." And they end up with better health outcomes for LESS MONEY!!
Health care bureaucracies will always exist. In America, our health care bureaucracies are privately run and largely unregulated. The mission statement of our private bureaucracies is to maximize profit. Period. Actual health outcomes are largely irrelevant if they do not overlap with the main purpose of the organization. And so our health bureaucracies will use every trick they can to deny people coverage. They employ some very smart people, whose sole purpose is to deny coverage.
When bureaucracies are government run, or are more tightly regulated, the mission statement changes. It becomes something similar to "maximize patient health". The government bureaucracies can actually become more efficient, because they are given a fixed amount of money, and are then told to maximize health as much as possible. This becomes the main purpose of the organization, and employees know it. They focus their attention on health outcomes. They feel that it is their duty to the public. They will often make due with less pay because they feel their job is so important.
What if someone is afraid of appearing to be afraid? Or afraid of being afraid? Or afraid of being afraid of being afraid?
I installed the beta of Kubuntu 9.10 a few days before the final release. It won't mount my windows hard drives. Samba is flakey. Grub takes a long time to load. I'm really close to jumping back to Debian stable, instead of downloading the proper 9.10 version.
Thank you for this quote. As another reply has mentioned, the key word to remember is "limited time". The rights authors gained on their own works were more similar to a lease, rather than outright ownership. One must also understand the underlying attitude behind this passage. There was an assumption that the works of the author were in the end to be public property, but that as a means to an end the writer was granted temporary rights, to encourage the production of more works. These rights were not to be "ownership".
What we have seen recently is a move to a model that is closer to outright ownership. The advent of DRM technology has meant that content "owners" have increasing power to micromanage the usage of their works by the public. This micromanagement is, or has the potential to become a substantial barrier to cultural exchange, which goes against the intentions of the authors of the Constitution. We must remember that it is us, the public, who are the ultimate owners of our culture.
Few people seem to question the implicit goal that companies seem to hold, that profits must always continue to increase forever. Any deviation from this path is seen as a failure. Thus, even though they are raking in enormous profits from theatres and DVD rentals, movie companies must find a way to increase those profits by putting the screws on already profitable business practices such as renting DVD's.
Ummm...no. He has reopened negotiations with Russia, which is the only other country with enough nuclear weapons to threaten our survival as a species. Reductions of this sort happen through mutual discussion and trust between the involved countries. Bush junior's neoconservative White House was on a path that would have very likely led to a new nuclear arms race with Russia. They were talking about and starting a process to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. This process would have seen the abandonment of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Missile shields with dubious effectiveness would have increased tension with Russia while not actually providing any real protection (there would be no effective way of distinguishing decoy bombs from real ones).
I presume you mean Bush Senior. I would hope you would give some credit to President Clinton as well. Bush junior however was pushing to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, and was responsible for putting real nuclear disarmament on the back burner.
The keyword here is "nominations". This doesn't mean they decided to give him the award at this time.
Are you bloody serious?!!!!!! The current health care system is a vampire on the American economy. We pay more and get less health care than EVERY OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED NATION. The overblown rhetoric surrounding this issue is the true symptom of insanity.
Please, someone...MOD PARENT DOWN.
From what I understand, Barack Obama is personally responsible for the recent push to increase nuclear disarmament. This is fairly well known in diplomatic circles. I suspect this was a prime reason why he was awarded this prize.
Microsoft does have a tendency to pre-announce "blue sky" projects that never see the light of day. Remember the promised Cairo OS that never came into being? Remember the promised WinFS that never seems to be released? Remember the promises to get rid of the registry? Remember the original promises of release dates for the OS that would eventually become Vista? I could go on and on and on...
If it looks like vaporware and it sounds like vaporware then it probably is vaporware.
Nuclear bombs are relatively easy to build, especially the older first generation fission bombs. It is largely a matter of controlling the neutrons...slowing them down and ensuring that the correct amount of neutrons bond with uranium/plutonium nuclei during a very short period of time. An hydrogen bomb is FAR MORE difficult to build. From what I have read, there is one particular fact/technique that has remained secret. Let's hope it stays that way.
The real difficulty in building a bomb is getting the highly enriched uranium/plutonium. Unfortunately, this particular secret has leaked out, such that both Pakistan and India have been able to use it. In essence, for uranium, the technique bonds four fluorine atoms to one uranium atom to make uranium hexafluoride gas. Centrifuges are then used to separate out the heavier U-238 molecules from the lighter U-235 molecules that are used for the chain reaction. However, this technique still requires an effort on a grand industrial scale. It cannot be done in a tiny desert cave. The facilities to enrich enough uranium to build even one bomb must be very very large, and there is inevitably leakage of tell-tale gas molecules into the atmosphere. These tell-tale leaked isotopes can also be used as a signature for the manufacturer of the uranium...even after the bomb has exploded. Thus they will always be able to tell who was the original bomb maker.