You cited a non-peer-reviewed crackpot website which claims:
As you very well know, the part I was referencing was the part about Venus. If you have any problems with anything else on the page -- for that matter, if you have any problems with ANYTHING on the page, I suggest you take it up with the author as I originally told you.
I already told you: that isn't my argument. It is someone else. I just did you a favor and looked up something you asked for on Google. His arguments are not my own and I did not even read them carefully. I merely looked them up for you because you seemed to wanted to argue about yet another straw-man that had next to nothing to do with anything I had said.
I have no desire (or any motivation, for that matter) to engage you in some ridiculous argument about whether Venus is proof of "greenhouse warming", as compared to Mercury or the Earth.
There are many reasons why even if it were true, it is hardly relevant: Mercury has an extremely long day, almost no atmosphere, and a very eccentric orbit. Venus has a surface atmospheric pressure 92 times (give or take) Earth's, it's atmosphere is MOSTLY CO2 (around 96% or so), versus Earth's 0.04% or less, again give or take a bit. Not to mention the vast clouds of sulfuric acid.
You seem to want to ignore all these other variables and argue about just CO2, when the degree to which CO2 in particular affects Venus' surface temperature is speculative, to say the least. I'm not going to get into an argument that pointless. There are papers on both sides of that argument, and I am happy to let their authors fight it out in the journals. It is none of my affair.
I tried to tell you that humans are responsible for the change in CO2 concentration.
Why did you "try to tell me" this? I haven't intentionally disputed this. Not for many years, anyway. I suppose I might have, 4-5 years ago, when I knew next to nothing about the subject. So who are you arguing with? I went to that page, and you have this to say:
Charming, as usual. Itâ(TM)s strange that you ask for real science to support the âoealarmistâ fact that humans caused the rise in CO2 because weâ(TM)re burning carbon to release CO2 faster than the warming oceans can outgas their dissolved CO2. Is anyone we know of disputing that? Is it even part of the âoedebateâ?
Once again, not only arguing with yourself (since I was not present), but also (again as usual) arguing about something I didn't even say. I wasn't arguing with you about those things. So why did you try to make it appear I did? Why were you trying to give the impression I said something I did not in fact say? I will ask anyone who reads this to ask themselves that question. You must have a motivation, so what is it?
You are simply continuing your ridiculous straw-man and out-of-context arguments with yourself. I've said it before: from where I sit, it just makes you look like a fool.
And as for "charming": you seem to forget that you have given me MANY reasons to not be polite to you at all. To say that some of your actions have been uncivil is an understatement. I owe you no charm, nor civility of my own.
I already told you I don't have any theories -- or opinion, for that matter -- about who manipulated the White House website "copy" of Obama's birth certificate.
By the way, dear readers: does anyone else happen to notice just how remarkably similar this "Laysej" person's comments are to those of Khayman80? In fact both the nature of the comments and their timing very strongly suggest that "Laysej" is nothing but a sock-puppet account for Khayman80.
Reminder: folks here at Slashdot have a very low opinion of people who sock-puppet.
Charming. Do you explain the fact that Venus is hotter than Mercury using basketball player gloves, gray Oreos, or truly original groundbreaking science?
Since it has little to do with arguments I have actually made, I don't try to explain it at all, nor do I have any reasonable obligation to do so. But I will briefly mention refutations by other people anyway, simply because you asked. Isn't that nice of me?
How about this? (This is someone else's work, not my own, so if you don't like it, argue with him.)
Evidence from Mars and Venus suggest that global warming from doubled carbon dioxide in the [Earth] atmosphere is unlikely to exceed 0.5 K. The atmospheres of these planets consist almost exclusively of CO2 (Table 1.2). Venus has an atmosphere containing CO2 at a pressure of 88 bars, i.e. 88 times our atmosphere's total pressure at sea level. Such an amount of CO2 causes greenhouse warming by 500 K there. On the other hand, the mere 0.006 bars of CO2 on Mars cause warming by 5.5K. These figures can be plotted on a graph of the logarithm of the pressure against the logarithm of the warming. The straight line between these two points can be extrapolated to find the warming effect of 600 ppm of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, i.e. 0.0006 bars. The answer is 0.47 K. This is only one of eight observed relationships between radiation and surface temperatures, each indicating only small effects from doubled CO2.
(From Idso, S.B. 1998: CO2-induced global warming Climate Research, 10, 69-82. K is Kelvin, NOT thousands.)
It took me about 30 seconds to find that. Spending another 30 seconds or so found this. Are you suggesting that if I spent more time I would not find more and better?
Again: if you have problems with their figures, I strongly suggest you argue with THEM. Because arguing with me isn't going to take their pages down. Is this support of Latour's argument? Probably not. But on the other hand it rather invalidates yours.
This person has no courage to engage the actual authors of ideas, but would rather do his best to ad-hominem others who mention those ideas. He has proven many times that he doesn't have "courage of conviction", but would rather snipe at others from the sidelines, without demonstrating strength of his own. That's called cowardice.
In any case, after many years now of being too tolerant and putting up with his abuse, I don't mind saying it like it is. I am looking into legal remedies against this odious person. We'll see how that turns out. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to save copies of these snipes of his. It's easier than getting a subpoena. But in all honesty I'm probably going to have to do that too.
A real skeptic would be checking my calculations but Jane can't even acknowledge them. If the Slayers are right, why is Venus hotter than Mercury?
A real skeptic would see you arguing with the person who made the argument in the first place, publicly, and not just your habit of "arguing" with people quoting the, with no notice on your personal blog, which nobody knows or cares about, so they don't even know you're trying to "argue" with them anyway.
I've stated this many times: your arguing with yourself on your personal blog amounts to zilch, because nobody knows or cares.
Do you HONESTLY expect me to visit your blog every day to see your arguments with yourself, and effigies of your "opponents"? And expect that is necessary to "refute" your straw-man and ad-hominem arguments? And (still to be legally determined) libel?
Pathetic. You've tried to argue with people who really matter (I don't claim to be one of them, but I've seen it a number of times) and you've come out the loser in every case. Even if you had the courage (haha... that's a laugh) of your convictions, you can't win a fucking argument. You don't know how. You don't understand logic. You've proved this many times.
Get stuffed, and go away. The ONLY thing you are to me is an annoyance. I have NO respect for you either as a scientist or a person.
I have already stated that it might have been done for legitimate reasons. Which makes your "conspiracy theory" accusation (which you have made many times, not just here) bogus.
But I am curious: why do you insist I demonstrate to you that it might NOT be a conspiracy theory? Are you unfamiliar with the subject?
I rather expect so. Here's my actual "theory": either you are ignorant of the actual facts surrounding the situation, and so assume it's "conspiracy theory", or you are ignorant of the actual facts surrounding the situation, and can't imagine why it might not be conspiracy theory, or you are actually familiar with the situation and are just trying to make me look bad, because you're an asshole.
If I have summarized the possibilities well (and I think I have), that means in 2 out of the 3 possibilities you are simply ignorant, and 1 out of 3 that you are just doing this to try to make me look bad.
But of course, that's assuming equal probability to each outcome, and of course I make no such assumption.
You're right - advocates of privitization have always claimed that no private person will ever screw up. Wait, no. So, better to hire somebody who cannot be fired... because they'll never screw up? Are you sure this story isn't proving the opposite of what you think if does?
How about just a reporter who knows what a "bus" (sic) is?
That's a very interesting theory. Who do you think manipulated it?
Where do you get the idea I would or should know this? There are a great many possibilities.
I repeat: it is not a "theory". It is established fact. The document published on the White House website is not a simple "copy" of a birth certificate. Anyone can download it and see for themselves that it is not a simple scan into Photoshop or Illustrator, as the White House claims. Forensic evidence indicates it was edited using both Adobe products and Mac OS X Preview, and that it is not even remotely possible that the final result is an unedited scan.
That is a far different thing from claiming I "know" Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii. I don't know that, and I don't claim that. I have no idea where he was born.
So you're saying someone has literally seen an American birth certificate from Obama, and not a copy or an assertion that it definitely exists?
This "Laysej" person (not even close to his real name) has made a practice of trying to imply I'm a "conspiracy theorist" just because I've mentioned suspicious facts before. Like the proven manipulation of the White House website "copy" of the birth certificate.
I don't claim to know where Obama was born. One of the (many) ways Laysej's logic fails is that he does not seem to realize that even if the copy were "fake", there can be legitimate reason for that. But of course he has no idea what those legitimate reasons may be. So to him, anybody who states the facts is a "conspiracy theorist".
I don't have any "theory" about a birth certificate. I do have solid evidence (which has not been debunked) that the "copy" of the birth certificate on the White House web page has been deliberately manipulated.
You seem to be implying I am a "birther". This is not the case and you know it not to be the case. I have stated many times right here on Slashdot that I have no idea (and no opinion) about where Obama was actually born.
So why are you deliberately trying to make me look bad? What is your motivation?
I know the answer. But I doubt many other readers do.
HINT: When faced with the facts, a couple of years ago, that his own arguments did not hold water, and that nobody had successfully refuted Latour, his reply to me was "they will". Which, if you understand English, is an admission of defeat.
It is 2 years or so later now, and they still haven't. Dr. Roy Spencer (himself a self-proclaimed climate skeptic) and Anthony Watts (also a climate skeptic) both tried to disprove him experimentally, and both failed. And nobody has pointed out any genuine errors in Latour's math or logic.
I guess I just can't let it slide. Khayman80's argument that Latour doesn't understand that the subject under discussion is net heat transfer is almost certainly disingenuous and intended to mislead, because we had that argument a couple of years ago. Which he lost, by the way.
Latour has written papers about EXACTLY that topic, and I know that Khayman80 has seen at least one of them, because of the mentioned argument (which he lost), in which he admitted to having seen it. So he is either lying in order to try to convince others I am wrong (which is dishonest), of he has completely forgotten about Latour's actual work, in which case he's just making up the argument (which is intellectually dishonest), OR he is trying to make a straw-man argument by suggesting that Latour himself was arguing something he actually wasn't. Which is intellectually dishonest.
I'll let other readers decide the existence (if any) and extent (if any) of Khayman80's intellectual dishonesty. The evidence is right there above, if any of you would care to go read ALL OF those old arguments (which he lost).
Since this person is not making any scientific argument anyway, but simply attempting ad-hominem, and saying "so-and-so is wrong" without ANY evidence (which is all he can do, because he doesn't have any), this was a completely pointless exercise on his part. He was simply making another attempt at dragging my persona through the mud. I can only conclude that was his only purpose, since he didn't make any actual, substantive arguments.
I have nothing to do with this person, or he with me. His pretense of knowing who I am and what I think, and his practice of taking years-old comments out of context and conflating them together does not make for sound argument.
Dr. Latour did heat-transfer work for NASA, and has made a career of building control systems for chemical processes involving heat. I daresay he is more of an expert on the subject than "Khayman80".
To the best of my knowledge, no-one to date has successfully refuted Latour's science. Many have tried, many have failed. Khayman80 himself admitted this a couple of years ago, right here on Slashdot, which makes me wonder why he's digging up even older arguments that he has since failed to refute. Perhaps he just forgot. Though I doubt it.
I have no reply to this person specifically. As far as I am concerned, he is a non-person.
Nonsense. LOTS of things are obvious to the uninformed:
Global warming, Young Earth, WMDs, chemtrails, anal probes... the list goes on and on. Granted, some of that is MISinformation, rather than lack of information, but I count misinformed as uninformed.
OP:
... we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.
Well, I grant the "threats or competitors" part, to some degree. But the U.S. now has MORE forests and other wildlife habitat than it had 100 years ago. In my general area, wolves and peregrine falcons have been reintroduced, quite successfully (there is now a wolf hunting season). Not to mention the rebound of raptors like osprey and eagles. There are an abundance of other predators like badgers and mountain lions... which means a robust-enough prey population to support them.
I don't know where you live, but where I do, there's not much extinction going on. Quite the opposite, actually.
I wouldn't even bother. No matter how valid a point you make the Kool-Aid Drinkers will never agree with you, and just continue quoting their gospel and insisting it's "fact", not politics. I know: I've been there many times.
The point that I was trying to make is that comparing smallpox to a gun, or even a nuclear weapon, isn't accurate. Using smallpox as a weapon is MAD even if you're the only one using it.
I understood your point. I was making a different one.
Repeat: you don't want to be the only sane person in a room full of nutjobs with insane weapons. That would also be insane.
Having live samples available is also not needed or useful for producing the vaccine.
I disagree completely. You can't test immunity if you don't have something to be immune against. Generally speaking, dead-virus vaccines tend to be less effective than live-virus vaccines, and you can't create more dead virus unless you have live virus to make it from.
Research doesn't take place in a vacuum. But before you jump on me, understand that I am fully aware that the "safe and secure" facilities used for this kind of research have had containment breaches in recent years.
If you want a real example of insanity, read up on the containment breach a couple of years ago involving H5N1 flu virus that they were trying to make MORE virulent and contagious.
How can you know that it is "unworkable"? Unworkable by what kind of force?
I meant "unworkable" in the sense that, at least via Marx's ideal of Socialism --> Communism, it won't work because the power-mongers, once in power, never want to give up Socialism. It's too much of a sweet deal for THEM.
No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous.
Yes, the point is that it's like MAD and other weapons policies: you don't want to put down your gun (or shield, for that matter) while the other guy is still holding on to his. Despite what many people say, that is completely sane and rational behavior.
The thing OP kind of sidesteps is that while Western countries countries resisted complete eradication, they did so openly. Only later it was discovered that other countries (most of which were supposedly in favor of the eradication program) kept their own samples and research anyway. Which is a perfect illustration of why the West wanted to hang on to theirs, too.
It's easy enough to call such policies insane, but nobody wants to be the only "sane" person in the room while all the nutjobs still have their weapons. That kind of disproves it would a sane approach, yes?
A company does not HAVE TO advertise over the internet, and even if they do, that doesn't "drive" the internet. In fact, a lot of large companies do not advertise on the internet at all. They use their regular media outlet advertising, and maintain a website. It works for them.
Ubiquitous web advertising is simply NOT a necessary thing for the existence of the internet, and never has been. In fact the internet saw MOST of its growth when advertising wasn't nearly the bandwidth leech it is now.
It does not follow that "Marx was a loon". Given a society or species that is much more altruistic, willing to contribute to the entire society rather than focusing on personal benefit, the result would be elevation of everybody.
In theory. In practice it has never worked and is never likely to work, because there will always be those people who aren't altruistic, and are instead power-hungry leeches.
You are correct, however, that it doesn't follow that Marx was a loon. I didn't mean that literally. I wouldn't say he was actually a loon. Rather, he was a paid tool of Statists who needed a justification for their Statist power-grabbing. And what is better justification than "the evolutionary road to Utopia"?
It was the people who followed his ideas, in hopes of gaining that theoretical but in practice unworkable Utopia, who were the actual loons.
Slashdot Mirror
You cited a non-peer-reviewed crackpot website which claims:
As you very well know, the part I was referencing was the part about Venus. If you have any problems with anything else on the page -- for that matter, if you have any problems with ANYTHING on the page, I suggest you take it up with the author as I originally told you.
I already told you: that isn't my argument. It is someone else. I just did you a favor and looked up something you asked for on Google. His arguments are not my own and I did not even read them carefully. I merely looked them up for you because you seemed to wanted to argue about yet another straw-man that had next to nothing to do with anything I had said.
I have no desire (or any motivation, for that matter) to engage you in some ridiculous argument about whether Venus is proof of "greenhouse warming", as compared to Mercury or the Earth.
There are many reasons why even if it were true, it is hardly relevant: Mercury has an extremely long day, almost no atmosphere, and a very eccentric orbit. Venus has a surface atmospheric pressure 92 times (give or take) Earth's, it's atmosphere is MOSTLY CO2 (around 96% or so), versus Earth's 0.04% or less, again give or take a bit. Not to mention the vast clouds of sulfuric acid.
You seem to want to ignore all these other variables and argue about just CO2, when the degree to which CO2 in particular affects Venus' surface temperature is speculative, to say the least. I'm not going to get into an argument that pointless. There are papers on both sides of that argument, and I am happy to let their authors fight it out in the journals. It is none of my affair.
I tried to tell you that humans are responsible for the change in CO2 concentration.
Why did you "try to tell me" this? I haven't intentionally disputed this. Not for many years, anyway. I suppose I might have, 4-5 years ago, when I knew next to nothing about the subject. So who are you arguing with? I went to that page, and you have this to say:
Charming, as usual. Itâ(TM)s strange that you ask for real science to support the âoealarmistâ fact that humans caused the rise in CO2 because weâ(TM)re burning carbon to release CO2 faster than the warming oceans can outgas their dissolved CO2. Is anyone we know of disputing that? Is it even part of the âoedebateâ?
Once again, not only arguing with yourself (since I was not present), but also (again as usual) arguing about something I didn't even say. I wasn't arguing with you about those things. So why did you try to make it appear I did? Why were you trying to give the impression I said something I did not in fact say? I will ask anyone who reads this to ask themselves that question. You must have a motivation, so what is it?
You are simply continuing your ridiculous straw-man and out-of-context arguments with yourself. I've said it before: from where I sit, it just makes you look like a fool.
And as for "charming": you seem to forget that you have given me MANY reasons to not be polite to you at all. To say that some of your actions have been uncivil is an understatement. I owe you no charm, nor civility of my own.
I already told you I don't have any theories -- or opinion, for that matter -- about who manipulated the White House website "copy" of Obama's birth certificate.
By the way, dear readers: does anyone else happen to notice just how remarkably similar this "Laysej" person's comments are to those of Khayman80? In fact both the nature of the comments and their timing very strongly suggest that "Laysej" is nothing but a sock-puppet account for Khayman80.
Reminder: folks here at Slashdot have a very low opinion of people who sock-puppet.
Go enlighten yourself, and stop bothering people who are better educated about the subject. There's a thing called Google. Use it.
Here. I'll provide a link to get you started.
Charming. Do you explain the fact that Venus is hotter than Mercury using basketball player gloves, gray Oreos, or truly original groundbreaking science?
Since it has little to do with arguments I have actually made, I don't try to explain it at all, nor do I have any reasonable obligation to do so. But I will briefly mention refutations by other people anyway, simply because you asked. Isn't that nice of me?
How about this? (This is someone else's work, not my own, so if you don't like it, argue with him.)
Evidence from Mars and Venus suggest that global warming from doubled carbon dioxide in the [Earth] atmosphere is unlikely to exceed 0.5 K. The atmospheres of these planets consist almost exclusively of CO2 (Table 1.2). Venus has an atmosphere containing CO2 at a pressure of 88 bars, i.e. 88 times our atmosphere's total pressure at sea level. Such an amount of CO2 causes greenhouse warming by 500 K there. On the other hand, the mere 0.006 bars of CO2 on Mars cause warming by 5.5K. These figures can be plotted on a graph of the logarithm of the pressure against the logarithm of the warming. The straight line between these two points can be extrapolated to find the warming effect of 600 ppm of CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, i.e. 0.0006 bars. The answer is 0.47 K. This is only one of eight observed relationships between radiation and surface temperatures, each indicating only small effects from doubled CO2.
(From Idso, S.B. 1998: CO2-induced global warming Climate Research, 10, 69-82. K is Kelvin, NOT thousands.)
It took me about 30 seconds to find that. Spending another 30 seconds or so found this. Are you suggesting that if I spent more time I would not find more and better?
Again: if you have problems with their figures, I strongly suggest you argue with THEM. Because arguing with me isn't going to take their pages down. Is this support of Latour's argument? Probably not. But on the other hand it rather invalidates yours.
I know how you can generate revenue! Sell it all to me for $100.
s/quoting the/quoting them
This person has no courage to engage the actual authors of ideas, but would rather do his best to ad-hominem others who mention those ideas. He has proven many times that he doesn't have "courage of conviction", but would rather snipe at others from the sidelines, without demonstrating strength of his own. That's called cowardice.
In any case, after many years now of being too tolerant and putting up with his abuse, I don't mind saying it like it is. I am looking into legal remedies against this odious person. We'll see how that turns out. In the meantime, I encourage everyone to save copies of these snipes of his. It's easier than getting a subpoena. But in all honesty I'm probably going to have to do that too.
A real skeptic would be checking my calculations but Jane can't even acknowledge them. If the Slayers are right, why is Venus hotter than Mercury?
A real skeptic would see you arguing with the person who made the argument in the first place, publicly, and not just your habit of "arguing" with people quoting the, with no notice on your personal blog, which nobody knows or cares about, so they don't even know you're trying to "argue" with them anyway.
I've stated this many times: your arguing with yourself on your personal blog amounts to zilch, because nobody knows or cares.
Do you HONESTLY expect me to visit your blog every day to see your arguments with yourself, and effigies of your "opponents"? And expect that is necessary to "refute" your straw-man and ad-hominem arguments? And (still to be legally determined) libel?
Pathetic. You've tried to argue with people who really matter (I don't claim to be one of them, but I've seen it a number of times) and you've come out the loser in every case. Even if you had the courage (haha... that's a laugh) of your convictions, you can't win a fucking argument. You don't know how. You don't understand logic. You've proved this many times.
Get stuffed, and go away. The ONLY thing you are to me is an annoyance. I have NO respect for you either as a scientist or a person.
I have already stated that it might have been done for legitimate reasons. Which makes your "conspiracy theory" accusation (which you have made many times, not just here) bogus.
But I am curious: why do you insist I demonstrate to you that it might NOT be a conspiracy theory? Are you unfamiliar with the subject?
I rather expect so. Here's my actual "theory": either you are ignorant of the actual facts surrounding the situation, and so assume it's "conspiracy theory", or you are ignorant of the actual facts surrounding the situation, and can't imagine why it might not be conspiracy theory, or you are actually familiar with the situation and are just trying to make me look bad, because you're an asshole.
If I have summarized the possibilities well (and I think I have), that means in 2 out of the 3 possibilities you are simply ignorant, and 1 out of 3 that you are just doing this to try to make me look bad.
But of course, that's assuming equal probability to each outcome, and of course I make no such assumption.
You're right - advocates of privitization have always claimed that no private person will ever screw up. Wait, no. So, better to hire somebody who cannot be fired ... because they'll never screw up? Are you sure this story isn't proving the opposite of what you think if does?
How about just a reporter who knows what a "bus" (sic) is?
That's a very interesting theory. Who do you think manipulated it?
Where do you get the idea I would or should know this? There are a great many possibilities.
I repeat: it is not a "theory". It is established fact. The document published on the White House website is not a simple "copy" of a birth certificate. Anyone can download it and see for themselves that it is not a simple scan into Photoshop or Illustrator, as the White House claims. Forensic evidence indicates it was edited using both Adobe products and Mac OS X Preview, and that it is not even remotely possible that the final result is an unedited scan.
That is a far different thing from claiming I "know" Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii. I don't know that, and I don't claim that. I have no idea where he was born.
So you're saying someone has literally seen an American birth certificate from Obama, and not a copy or an assertion that it definitely exists?
This "Laysej" person (not even close to his real name) has made a practice of trying to imply I'm a "conspiracy theorist" just because I've mentioned suspicious facts before. Like the proven manipulation of the White House website "copy" of the birth certificate.
I don't claim to know where Obama was born. One of the (many) ways Laysej's logic fails is that he does not seem to realize that even if the copy were "fake", there can be legitimate reason for that. But of course he has no idea what those legitimate reasons may be. So to him, anybody who states the facts is a "conspiracy theorist".
I don't have any "theory" about a birth certificate. I do have solid evidence (which has not been debunked) that the "copy" of the birth certificate on the White House web page has been deliberately manipulated.
You seem to be implying I am a "birther". This is not the case and you know it not to be the case. I have stated many times right here on Slashdot that I have no idea (and no opinion) about where Obama was actually born.
So why are you deliberately trying to make me look bad? What is your motivation?
I know the answer. But I doubt many other readers do.
HINT: When faced with the facts, a couple of years ago, that his own arguments did not hold water, and that nobody had successfully refuted Latour, his reply to me was "they will". Which, if you understand English, is an admission of defeat.
It is 2 years or so later now, and they still haven't. Dr. Roy Spencer (himself a self-proclaimed climate skeptic) and Anthony Watts (also a climate skeptic) both tried to disprove him experimentally, and both failed. And nobody has pointed out any genuine errors in Latour's math or logic.
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I guess I just can't let it slide. Khayman80's argument that Latour doesn't understand that the subject under discussion is net heat transfer is almost certainly disingenuous and intended to mislead, because we had that argument a couple of years ago. Which he lost, by the way.
Latour has written papers about EXACTLY that topic, and I know that Khayman80 has seen at least one of them, because of the mentioned argument (which he lost), in which he admitted to having seen it. So he is either lying in order to try to convince others I am wrong (which is dishonest), of he has completely forgotten about Latour's actual work, in which case he's just making up the argument (which is intellectually dishonest), OR he is trying to make a straw-man argument by suggesting that Latour himself was arguing something he actually wasn't. Which is intellectually dishonest.
I'll let other readers decide the existence (if any) and extent (if any) of Khayman80's intellectual dishonesty. The evidence is right there above, if any of you would care to go read ALL OF those old arguments (which he lost).
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I will add:
Since this person is not making any scientific argument anyway, but simply attempting ad-hominem, and saying "so-and-so is wrong" without ANY evidence (which is all he can do, because he doesn't have any), this was a completely pointless exercise on his part. He was simply making another attempt at dragging my persona through the mud. I can only conclude that was his only purpose, since he didn't make any actual, substantive arguments.
Public Service Announcement:
I have nothing to do with this person, or he with me. His pretense of knowing who I am and what I think, and his practice of taking years-old comments out of context and conflating them together does not make for sound argument.
Dr. Latour did heat-transfer work for NASA, and has made a career of building control systems for chemical processes involving heat. I daresay he is more of an expert on the subject than "Khayman80".
To the best of my knowledge, no-one to date has successfully refuted Latour's science. Many have tried, many have failed. Khayman80 himself admitted this a couple of years ago, right here on Slashdot, which makes me wonder why he's digging up even older arguments that he has since failed to refute. Perhaps he just forgot. Though I doubt it.
I have no reply to this person specifically. As far as I am concerned, he is a non-person.
Global warming, Young Earth, WMDs, chemtrails, anal probes... the list goes on and on. Granted, some of that is MISinformation, rather than lack of information, but I count misinformed as uninformed.
OP:
... we continue to drive animal extinctions today through the destruction of wild lands, consumption of animals as a resource or a luxury, and persecution of species we see as threats or competitors.
Well, I grant the "threats or competitors" part, to some degree. But the U.S. now has MORE forests and other wildlife habitat than it had 100 years ago. In my general area, wolves and peregrine falcons have been reintroduced, quite successfully (there is now a wolf hunting season). Not to mention the rebound of raptors like osprey and eagles. There are an abundance of other predators like badgers and mountain lions... which means a robust-enough prey population to support them.
I don't know where you live, but where I do, there's not much extinction going on. Quite the opposite, actually.
I wouldn't even bother. No matter how valid a point you make the Kool-Aid Drinkers will never agree with you, and just continue quoting their gospel and insisting it's "fact", not politics. I know: I've been there many times.
Smallpox is not a MAD weapon like nuclear weapons, that analogy does not work.
Someone launches smallpox at you, what are you going to do, launch some kind of herpes at them?
No, that's not the point. Having a live virus for developing vaccines and antivirals are where the usefulness is.
It is very much like the anti-missile component of MAD, which neither side wanted the other to have.
The point that I was trying to make is that comparing smallpox to a gun, or even a nuclear weapon, isn't accurate. Using smallpox as a weapon is MAD even if you're the only one using it.
I understood your point. I was making a different one.
Repeat: you don't want to be the only sane person in a room full of nutjobs with insane weapons. That would also be insane.
Having live samples available is also not needed or useful for producing the vaccine.
I disagree completely. You can't test immunity if you don't have something to be immune against. Generally speaking, dead-virus vaccines tend to be less effective than live-virus vaccines, and you can't create more dead virus unless you have live virus to make it from.
Research doesn't take place in a vacuum. But before you jump on me, understand that I am fully aware that the "safe and secure" facilities used for this kind of research have had containment breaches in recent years.
If you want a real example of insanity, read up on the containment breach a couple of years ago involving H5N1 flu virus that they were trying to make MORE virulent and contagious.
How can you know that it is "unworkable"? Unworkable by what kind of force?
I meant "unworkable" in the sense that, at least via Marx's ideal of Socialism --> Communism, it won't work because the power-mongers, once in power, never want to give up Socialism. It's too much of a sweet deal for THEM.
No one who wasn't literally insane would try to use smallpox as a weapon, the infection would inevitably spread back to the country which initiated it, and the idea that we would need samples of our own to retaliate is preposterous.
Yes, the point is that it's like MAD and other weapons policies: you don't want to put down your gun (or shield, for that matter) while the other guy is still holding on to his. Despite what many people say, that is completely sane and rational behavior.
The thing OP kind of sidesteps is that while Western countries countries resisted complete eradication, they did so openly. Only later it was discovered that other countries (most of which were supposedly in favor of the eradication program) kept their own samples and research anyway. Which is a perfect illustration of why the West wanted to hang on to theirs, too.
It's easy enough to call such policies insane, but nobody wants to be the only "sane" person in the room while all the nutjobs still have their weapons. That kind of disproves it would a sane approach, yes?
It's a crappy story, but the real threat is that cheaply-available drones are an easy way to bypass physical security layers.
So are toy cars.
So what?
I almost forgot:
A company does not HAVE TO advertise over the internet, and even if they do, that doesn't "drive" the internet. In fact, a lot of large companies do not advertise on the internet at all. They use their regular media outlet advertising, and maintain a website. It works for them.
Ubiquitous web advertising is simply NOT a necessary thing for the existence of the internet, and never has been. In fact the internet saw MOST of its growth when advertising wasn't nearly the bandwidth leech it is now.
It does not follow that "Marx was a loon". Given a society or species that is much more altruistic, willing to contribute to the entire society rather than focusing on personal benefit, the result would be elevation of everybody.
In theory. In practice it has never worked and is never likely to work, because there will always be those people who aren't altruistic, and are instead power-hungry leeches.
You are correct, however, that it doesn't follow that Marx was a loon. I didn't mean that literally. I wouldn't say he was actually a loon. Rather, he was a paid tool of Statists who needed a justification for their Statist power-grabbing. And what is better justification than "the evolutionary road to Utopia"?
It was the people who followed his ideas, in hopes of gaining that theoretical but in practice unworkable Utopia, who were the actual loons.