No great surprise. But the Feds have no place enforcing it. In a case such as this, that would probably be illegal, since they have no legal authority to be enforcing trespass laws.
"Just no. That's totally wrong. Are you deliberately misunderstanding? A mutation found to allow binding of human tissue was developed, but not by infecting ferrets."
Except that YOU are wrong. Right here (the same link provided by someone else above), paragraph 5.
That very clearly says that they created a new H5N1 strain with the H5 HA protein, which increased transmissibility. And (as I cite references for in another post below), it was precisely "To determine whether H5N1 viruses could be transmitted between humans..." [paragraph 4 of that same link].
Further as this article, and others, point out, the virus was deliberately selected for transmissibility by infecting a sequence of ferrets.
So you are just wrong, man. Nice job of speculation, but you need to get your facts straight.
Except yes. Where is your evidence? You can "point it out" all you like, but unless you have something to back it up, then it's just so much hot air.
And it is nothing but hot air. I repeat: ferrets are used for influenza studies precisely because their susceptibility and symptoms so closely mirror humans.
Would you like evidence for MY claims? How about these:
"Perhaps, as if by magic, you missed THE WHOLE POINT of my original post.... You inferred that out of your association with COv2."
Hahahaha! I did nothing of the sort. I neither missed your point, or inferred as you claim. First, I understood your post just fine. The only point I was making here was that one of your comments was inappropriate given the context. And I did not need to "infer" your context because you spelled it out in plain English. Quote:
"... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."
You are claiming:
"I removed the dependence on the fallacy by defining the term within the same context"
But that's just BS, because they were clearly (in plain English) referring to natural processes, while you (in plain English) were referring to processes "outside the natural chemistry of the Earth"!!!
Q.E.D.
You're trying to have it both ways, man, but you can't. YOU CHANGED THE CONTEXT. Like I said before: Period. End of story. You can spend weeks and write a whole book trying to justify it if you want, but it wouldn't matter in the slightest. It's still bullshit.
Give it up, pal. You're struggling like a fish on a hook, and getting absolutely nowhere.
"There are more than enough overskilled attorneys that can argue for the legal theory of "zones of reasonable expectation of diminished liberty" for just such a purpose. Right now it covers about 3,794,101 sq mi. [wikipedia.org]"
Probably true, but there are just as many who could argue against it, with more facts and reason to back them up.
"If it's against stadium rules, the Feds certainly do have the authority to prevent someone bringing a handgun in, because at that point they're trespassing."
No, they do not. Trespassing laws are state and local laws, not Federal, and Federal agents have no authority to enforce them.
Further, just in case YOUR reading comprehension is weak (as it seems to be):
According to the article you linked to (the one published on January 25), in one of the labs they did indeed create an H5 HA variant of the H5N1 virus, that was -- quite predictably -- deadly to the ferrets. And again, since ferret susceptibility to influenza is so close to that of humans, it is very likely that it was, indeed, a "superflu" transmissible to humans.
How you missed that is beyond me. It's right there in plain English, in paragraph 5.
Also, "virus" is Greek, not Latin. The proper plural form is "viruses".
The largest employer in our area was an out-of-state corporation. They employed a lot of people, but they were also getting tax breaks, AND very much reduced rates for water and electricity. And they used a LOT of electricity.
Also because they employed so many people for decades, they felt they could throw their weight around politically. They made themselves cushy business deals, and the aforementioned tax breaks, and utility rates, etc. And the politicians went along with it because, after all, they employed so many people. And there was a large union presence, too.
But finally, somebody decided to study the actual cash flow into and out of the business. As it turned out, the money they were "saving" on taxes, water, and electricity -- all of which had to be made up by the local citizenry, of course, so it amounted to a subsidy -- PLUS the fact that the profits went to the corporate office in some other state, meant: not only were they not actually bringing much money into the area, but even with all the people they employed, they were probably actually draining money from the local economy.
Armed with that information, the politicians stopped kissing their asses. They didn't like that, and tried threats: "If you don't give us the sweet deals we want, we are going to pack up our toys and go home!"
"Where do people like you live? I ask honestly, because I've never lived anywhere that people wouldn't kill for a high-tech datacenter to provide some real jobs close by."
I'll tell you where. I live in an area where large corporations came in, and formed "public/private partnerships", that is to say, deals exactly like that: tax breaks, reduced rates for electricity, etc. And the outcome more often than not was nothing short of rape of the taxpayer.
We got rid of one such corporation not that long ago, and we are the better off for it.
Don't assume such deals will bring money into your area. Especially if the corporation is not local. Cash flow analysis is key; you may just find that such an operation doesn't make your region much money after all, even if they do employ people.
"No context can be changed if they haven't defined it otherwise."
Absolute bullshit. You might have studied chemistry of physics but your grasp of English is obviously pretty weak.
Context can be inferred, and in this case there was ample information from which to infer it. They very clearly described NATURAL processes. You, on the other hand, approached it from the context of UNnatural (industrial or at least man-caused) processes.
You changed the context, dude. You have been going to great lengths to try to talk yourself out of it, but it's the simple truth. I swear, I have not seen anybody so defensive about being wrong, about something so simple, in at least a couple of years.
"Just no. That's totally wrong. Are you deliberately misunderstanding? A mutation found to allow binding of human tissue was developed, but not by infecting ferrets. Subsequently, aerosol transmissibility amongst FERRETS was selected for. Not transmissibility amongst humans."
I will repeat what I wrote to someone else above:
What YOU don't seem to understand is that ferrets are used precisely because their susceptibility to influenza is nearly identical to that of humans. An influenza virus that transmits among ferrets is extremely likely to be transmissible to humans as well. More likely than not, in fact.
"Right. But the expectation is that the mutations the virus makes, in the process of improving their ability to infect the new non-human host, typically reduce their ability to infect humans. Not necessarily true, of course. But more likely than not."
The reason that is irrelevant in this case, and the experiments more alarming than many people might think, is because ferret and human transimissibility (and susceptibility) are extremely similar. That is the whole reason WHY ferrets are used in influenza studies.
If it were a fish or a frog or even a dog or gorilla, it would probably be much different (I admit I don't know much about influenza in gorillas). But it wasn't any of those. It was ferrets.
The whole point here is: influenza that transmits among ferrets is extremely likely to be transmissible to humans. It is UNlikely to be the other way around in situation. So, a virus that was NOT particularly transmissible was made MORE transmissible, in a way that can reasonably be expected to apply to humans. Yes, it was an extremely dangerous thing to do.
GP was fully justified in calling you on your complacency. True, as it turned out, the mutant virus was not apparently particularly lethal. However, and this is the more important point: that was not known in advance; it easily could have been.
I repeat: some of these same labs have had containment breaches before. It can and does happen.
If, as you state, the research is truly needed, then better facilities should be built and better protocols for containment developed.
What they actually did was create a NEW strain of the virus, which was physically transmissible. Before they bred this transmissible virus via ferrets, it was not easily transmitted to humans.
So what they did was actually create a superflu... one with a high mortality rate in humans and is easily transmissible. Whereas before these experiments, it already had a high mortality rate, but was not easy to transmit.
These were extrememly dangerous experiments that should never have been carried out. The labs where they did this work do make mistakes... we know because they have suffered loss of containment in the past!
If you want to read more about it, just google "H5N1" and "ferret".
Even in medicine (though I do not say the same about the pharmaceutical industry)... like the recent announcement by MIT of a treatment that could cure nearly ALL viruses, including HIV and the common cold.
And the recent research into restoring telomerase in the human body.
I have already stated my point, in clear, explicit language, more than once. Stop blaming other people for your failure to understand, if that is truly what it is.
1) The letter explicitly says, "The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant."
IN WHAT CONTEXT WAS THIS STATEMENT MADE??? The context that you spelled out, i.e. "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."??? NO. Not even close. The letter states:
"CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth."
It is quite obvious that the context here is not "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth", but rather WITHIN the natural chemistry of the Earth. Natural processes are being descibed. This is plain, clear, obvious English.
Therefore, you did change the context. And any failure to recognize that is on your part, not the fault of anybody else. You are guilty of the logical fallacy of shifting the context in order to try to make your point, and therefore it is not a valid argument.
As I stated before: you can try to overly complicate that very simple truth all you want, and try to skate around it all you want, but it won't change the fact that you did, in fact, switch the context.
2) It's legal status states it is a pollutant, period.
Straw-man argument, completely irrelevant to THIS context.
3) I said, "A relative output outside of the natural chemistry of the Earth (the effect of living creatures and other processes) it does count as a deposit which changes the chemistry of the surrounding environment." Something I most recently referred to as the, "press-release," definition.
And the whole point here was that this is not the same context used in the letter, as I have already pointed out several times, and this time I have taken extra pains to make it more "explicit" and specific, so you could not possibly miss it. Why that should be necessary is a mystery to me, as other people have not seemed to have had the same difficulty with this concept.
And just as an aside: the fact that YOU did not understand the similarity between my analogy and the topic under discussion is YOUR failure, not mine. The similarity is rather obvious, actually, if you would pull your head out and actually look for it.
Just as a sanity check, I am going to take this exchange and show it to some of my colleagues, to see what they have to say. I am pretty confident that they are going to end up laughing at you, too.
"You didn't make an analogy, and you haven't presented pollutants. An analogy involves comparing two things to demonstrate their similarities...."
Can I call them, or what?
Absolutely predictable.
Fella, in the simplest words I can drum up and still accurately describe the situation: you argued that the letter's claim that CO2 is not a pollutant is false. But your argument depends entirely on YOU shifting the context away from the one that was obviously being used in the original letter.
If I wanted to change the original context, as you did, I could make all kinds of arguments, too. That would not make them any more valid than yours was. Because you changed the context.
You can try to skate around it all you like, but it still all boils down to the simple fact that your argument is made in a different context than the one in the letter. So it is not a valid argument.
Period. End of story. You can try to complicate it, you can try to say that *I* am misunderstanding... you can try all kinds of things. And I would not even dream of trying to stop you. I'll just sit here and laugh at you.
I know exactly what I quoted. Repeating the quote doesn't contribute any further information. That was a rather strange thing to do. And I didn't "skim over" anything. That was the very context in which I intended my comment. My point was very simple. That the statement:
"... as a relative output outside of the natural chemistry of the Earth (the effect of living creatures and other processes) it does count as a deposit which changes the chemistry of the surrounding environment, ergo, pollution."
... and other statements of that nature, can apply to MANY things, other than just carbon dioxide, that we also do not normally consider to be pollutants. And that therefore singling out carbon dioxide in that context is hardly justified. Amazing that you missed that. I felt I had explained it in pretty simple English.
And further, that if you are going to call CO2 a pollutant in that context, then you must logically accept that we can also call other substances that we do not normally consider to be pollutants, to also be pollutants in the same context. That is to say, in the context of "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."
"You didn't say anything about poisons here."
Sheesh. Do you even know what the word analogy means? For someone who obviously considers himself to be a smart person, you sure seem to have some reading comprehension issues.
"It doesn't matter who you are. I see you as another string of characters on website, an avatar for the logic you present. "
If that is so, then how do you justify the following comment?
"Unlike you, however, I've actually thrown in some genuine, peer reviewed research."
Together, those statements make no sense. You have contradicted yourself. If you neither know or care who I am, what are you doing making unfounded claims like "Unlike you, I've..." ???
"As I've said recently regarding ad hominem attack on Richard Stallman sometime in the past couple of months on slashdot, it doesn't matter who the person is."
I will point out that I stated this very thing (although not in exactly the same words) elsewhere here on Slashdot today. I do understand this, quite well. But that has nothing to do with the point you seem to be trying to address. The actual point was: if you don't know who I am, how do you presume to know what papers I have published?
"You did nothing to actually contribute to the conversation."
You have demonstrated quite clearly (and publicly) that you did not understand the point I was making. It's pretty arrogant to presume to know how much it has added, from the point of view of some other reader. You are not the only one here.
"You haven't shown a weakness of logic on my part that didn't require altering the context..."
Nonsense. I did not alter the context. I was specifically addressing the context that you, yourself, laid out. I was making the point that in that context, things other than carbon dioxide -- things that in other contexts we might not consider to be pollutants -- can ALSO be considered pollutants. And that was also the point of my analogy: that such definitions are context-sensitive. Using the very context you used (" a relative output outside of the natural chemistry..."), I can define pretty much anything I want to be a pollutant. Therefore, that argument is very far from compelling.
The salient point here is that YOUR context, the very context you described, is not the same context as was clearly being used in the original letter you were discussing, when it mentioned "pollutant". So if anyone is guilty of shifting context, it is you.
"The chemistry of the Earth's natural cycles and environs are identifiably altered under increased carbon dioxide uptake. Carbon dioxide forms acids with constituent components of the atmosphere, soil and water. Water is chemically neutral and oxygen readily balances out to the available reactions, contributing nothing to net chemical cycles on the Earth outside of return carbon that has been out of the cycles for thousands and millions of years (see Cretaceous Period vs the logic of biofuels and green chemistry)."
Water dissolves a great many compounds. Oxygen forms oxides and other compounds (in general, the more readily the higher the concentration).
Seriously. My comment was about your characterization of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. I do not not dispute that it is, technically, but putting it that way is rather disingenuous. Many other otherwise innocuous substances could be considered to be pollutants in precisely the same context.
As an analogy: drink enough water and it will kill you. Breathing pure oxygen (or pure CO2 for that matter) for very long will do the same. Therefore, water, oxygen, and CO2 are all poisons. That is a true statement, but by itself is rather misleading.
All I am saying is that CO2 is a "pollutant" in the sense that water and oxygen are "poisons". That is to say: under what we generally consider to be normal circumstances, they really aren't. They may be, in a technical sense, but only technically. I just don't think it's justified to single out CO2 in this context and define it as a particular pollutant, as distinct from other chemicals, because so many other things can be viewed in exactly the same light. It may be 100% true, but it's a misleading statement.
"Unlike you, however, I've actually thrown in some genuine, peer reviewed research."
Are you sure of that? You do not know who I am, nor do I care to tell you. Nice guess, and statistics favor it as a guess, but I would not be quite so confident if I were you.
Nice list of references, too. But I have to wonder why you feel the need to brag.
Slashdot Mirror
No great surprise. But the Feds have no place enforcing it. In a case such as this, that would probably be illegal, since they have no legal authority to be enforcing trespass laws.
"Just no. That's totally wrong. Are you deliberately misunderstanding? A mutation found to allow binding of human tissue was developed, but not by infecting ferrets."
Except that YOU are wrong. Right here (the same link provided by someone else above), paragraph 5.
That very clearly says that they created a new H5N1 strain with the H5 HA protein, which increased transmissibility. And (as I cite references for in another post below), it was precisely "To determine whether H5N1 viruses could be transmitted between humans..." [paragraph 4 of that same link].
Further as this article, and others, point out, the virus was deliberately selected for transmissibility by infecting a sequence of ferrets.
So you are just wrong, man. Nice job of speculation, but you need to get your facts straight.
"Except not. ..."
Except yes. Where is your evidence? You can "point it out" all you like, but unless you have something to back it up, then it's just so much hot air.
And it is nothing but hot air. I repeat: ferrets are used for influenza studies precisely because their susceptibility and symptoms so closely mirror humans.
Would you like evidence for MY claims? How about these:
"Ferrets are exquisitely susceptible to infection with human influenza viruses and are widely believed to be the ideal small animal model for influenza research."
"The results show the value of the ferret model. A/LA resembled the transmission of influenza in humans when under antibody pressure."
"... only the ferret model is equally well suited for studying both the pathogenicity and transmissibility of human and avian influenza viruses." [emphasis added]
Those are just a few out of a great many. Would you like more? A brief moment on Google brings up pages and pages of just such references.
You are simply wrong. And an arrogant ass as well.
"Perhaps, as if by magic, you missed THE WHOLE POINT of my original post. ... You inferred that out of your association with COv2."
Hahahaha! I did nothing of the sort. I neither missed your point, or inferred as you claim. First, I understood your post just fine. The only point I was making here was that one of your comments was inappropriate given the context. And I did not need to "infer" your context because you spelled it out in plain English. Quote:
"... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."
You are claiming:
"I removed the dependence on the fallacy by defining the term within the same context"
But that's just BS, because they were clearly (in plain English) referring to natural processes, while you (in plain English) were referring to processes "outside the natural chemistry of the Earth"!!!
Q.E.D.
You're trying to have it both ways, man, but you can't. YOU CHANGED THE CONTEXT. Like I said before: Period. End of story. You can spend weeks and write a whole book trying to justify it if you want, but it wouldn't matter in the slightest. It's still bullshit.
Give it up, pal. You're struggling like a fish on a hook, and getting absolutely nowhere.
"There are more than enough overskilled attorneys that can argue for the legal theory of "zones of reasonable expectation of diminished liberty" for just such a purpose. Right now it covers about 3,794,101 sq mi. [wikipedia.org]"
Probably true, but there are just as many who could argue against it, with more facts and reason to back them up.
"If it's against stadium rules, the Feds certainly do have the authority to prevent someone bringing a handgun in, because at that point they're trespassing."
No, they do not. Trespassing laws are state and local laws, not Federal, and Federal agents have no authority to enforce them.
Oops, pardon me, I guess I got that backward. Latin, not Greek. In any case, "viruses" is still the proper form.
Further, just in case YOUR reading comprehension is weak (as it seems to be):
According to the article you linked to (the one published on January 25), in one of the labs they did indeed create an H5 HA variant of the H5N1 virus, that was -- quite predictably -- deadly to the ferrets. And again, since ferret susceptibility to influenza is so close to that of humans, it is very likely that it was, indeed, a "superflu" transmissible to humans.
How you missed that is beyond me. It's right there in plain English, in paragraph 5.
Also, "virus" is Greek, not Latin. The proper plural form is "viruses".
Even jobs do not always pay for themselves.
The largest employer in our area was an out-of-state corporation. They employed a lot of people, but they were also getting tax breaks, AND very much reduced rates for water and electricity. And they used a LOT of electricity.
Also because they employed so many people for decades, they felt they could throw their weight around politically. They made themselves cushy business deals, and the aforementioned tax breaks, and utility rates, etc. And the politicians went along with it because, after all, they employed so many people. And there was a large union presence, too.
But finally, somebody decided to study the actual cash flow into and out of the business. As it turned out, the money they were "saving" on taxes, water, and electricity -- all of which had to be made up by the local citizenry, of course, so it amounted to a subsidy -- PLUS the fact that the profits went to the corporate office in some other state, meant: not only were they not actually bringing much money into the area, but even with all the people they employed, they were probably actually draining money from the local economy.
Armed with that information, the politicians stopped kissing their asses. They didn't like that, and tried threats: "If you don't give us the sweet deals we want, we are going to pack up our toys and go home!"
The response?
"Bye-bye!"
You should have seen the looks on their faces.
"Where do people like you live? I ask honestly, because I've never lived anywhere that people wouldn't kill for a high-tech datacenter to provide some real jobs close by."
I'll tell you where. I live in an area where large corporations came in, and formed "public/private partnerships", that is to say, deals exactly like that: tax breaks, reduced rates for electricity, etc. And the outcome more often than not was nothing short of rape of the taxpayer.
We got rid of one such corporation not that long ago, and we are the better off for it.
Don't assume such deals will bring money into your area. Especially if the corporation is not local. Cash flow analysis is key; you may just find that such an operation doesn't make your region much money after all, even if they do employ people.
"No context can be changed if they haven't defined it otherwise."
Absolute bullshit. You might have studied chemistry of physics but your grasp of English is obviously pretty weak.
Context can be inferred, and in this case there was ample information from which to infer it. They very clearly described NATURAL processes. You, on the other hand, approached it from the context of UNnatural (industrial or at least man-caused) processes.
You changed the context, dude. You have been going to great lengths to try to talk yourself out of it, but it's the simple truth. I swear, I have not seen anybody so defensive about being wrong, about something so simple, in at least a couple of years.
"Don't even bother replying with more incomprehension."
Just maybe you ought to look into situations a little more thoroughly yourself before you presume to condescend.
"Just no. That's totally wrong. Are you deliberately misunderstanding? A mutation found to allow binding of human tissue was developed, but not by infecting ferrets. Subsequently, aerosol transmissibility amongst FERRETS was selected for. Not transmissibility amongst humans."
I will repeat what I wrote to someone else above:
What YOU don't seem to understand is that ferrets are used precisely because their susceptibility to influenza is nearly identical to that of humans. An influenza virus that transmits among ferrets is extremely likely to be transmissible to humans as well. More likely than not, in fact.
"Right. But the expectation is that the mutations the virus makes, in the process of improving their ability to infect the new non-human host, typically reduce their ability to infect humans. Not necessarily true, of course. But more likely than not."
The reason that is irrelevant in this case, and the experiments more alarming than many people might think, is because ferret and human transimissibility (and susceptibility) are extremely similar. That is the whole reason WHY ferrets are used in influenza studies.
If it were a fish or a frog or even a dog or gorilla, it would probably be much different (I admit I don't know much about influenza in gorillas). But it wasn't any of those. It was ferrets.
The whole point here is: influenza that transmits among ferrets is extremely likely to be transmissible to humans. It is UNlikely to be the other way around in situation. So, a virus that was NOT particularly transmissible was made MORE transmissible, in a way that can reasonably be expected to apply to humans. Yes, it was an extremely dangerous thing to do.
GP was fully justified in calling you on your complacency. True, as it turned out, the mutant virus was not apparently particularly lethal. However, and this is the more important point: that was not known in advance; it easily could have been.
I repeat: some of these same labs have had containment breaches before. It can and does happen.
If, as you state, the research is truly needed, then better facilities should be built and better protocols for containment developed.
All I have to say to the Feds is: good luck with that.
Indiana is a "shall issue" concealed carry state. Indianapolis has an exception to concealed carry in city parks, but the stadium is not a city park.
What that means is: the Feds have no authority to prevent someone from taking a legally-carried concealed handgun into the stadium.
It may be against the stadium rules. That I don't know. But it isn't against the law.
What they actually did was create a NEW strain of the virus, which was physically transmissible. Before they bred this transmissible virus via ferrets, it was not easily transmitted to humans.
So what they did was actually create a superflu... one with a high mortality rate in humans and is easily transmissible. Whereas before these experiments, it already had a high mortality rate, but was not easy to transmit.
These were extrememly dangerous experiments that should never have been carried out. The labs where they did this work do make mistakes... we know because they have suffered loss of containment in the past!
If you want to read more about it, just google "H5N1" and "ferret".
Mod up. My sentiments exactly.
Even in medicine (though I do not say the same about the pharmaceutical industry)... like the recent announcement by MIT of a treatment that could cure nearly ALL viruses, including HIV and the common cold.
And the recent research into restoring telomerase in the human body.
And... and... and...
I don't see any "failure" here.
Utility / power grids are usually financed with tax money. That means taxpayer.
Is Facebook paying for this upgrade? It damned well better be!!!
1) The letter explicitly says, "The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant."
IN WHAT CONTEXT WAS THIS STATEMENT MADE??? The context that you spelled out, i.e. "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."??? NO. Not even close. The letter states:
"CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth."
It is quite obvious that the context here is not "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth", but rather WITHIN the natural chemistry of the Earth. Natural processes are being descibed. This is plain, clear, obvious English.
Therefore, you did change the context. And any failure to recognize that is on your part, not the fault of anybody else. You are guilty of the logical fallacy of shifting the context in order to try to make your point, and therefore it is not a valid argument.
As I stated before: you can try to overly complicate that very simple truth all you want, and try to skate around it all you want, but it won't change the fact that you did, in fact, switch the context.
2) It's legal status states it is a pollutant, period.
Straw-man argument, completely irrelevant to THIS context.
3) I said, "A relative output outside of the natural chemistry of the Earth (the effect of living creatures and other processes) it does count as a deposit which changes the chemistry of the surrounding environment." Something I most recently referred to as the, "press-release," definition.
And the whole point here was that this is not the same context used in the letter, as I have already pointed out several times, and this time I have taken extra pains to make it more "explicit" and specific, so you could not possibly miss it. Why that should be necessary is a mystery to me, as other people have not seemed to have had the same difficulty with this concept.
And just as an aside: the fact that YOU did not understand the similarity between my analogy and the topic under discussion is YOUR failure, not mine. The similarity is rather obvious, actually, if you would pull your head out and actually look for it.
Just as a sanity check, I am going to take this exchange and show it to some of my colleagues, to see what they have to say. I am pretty confident that they are going to end up laughing at you, too.
"You didn't make an analogy, and you haven't presented pollutants. An analogy involves comparing two things to demonstrate their similarities. ..."
Can I call them, or what?
Absolutely predictable.
Fella, in the simplest words I can drum up and still accurately describe the situation: you argued that the letter's claim that CO2 is not a pollutant is false. But your argument depends entirely on YOU shifting the context away from the one that was obviously being used in the original letter.
If I wanted to change the original context, as you did, I could make all kinds of arguments, too. That would not make them any more valid than yours was. Because you changed the context.
You can try to skate around it all you like, but it still all boils down to the simple fact that your argument is made in a different context than the one in the letter. So it is not a valid argument.
Period. End of story. You can try to complicate it, you can try to say that *I* am misunderstanding... you can try all kinds of things. And I would not even dream of trying to stop you. I'll just sit here and laugh at you.
"See what you're doing there? You just quoted..."
I know exactly what I quoted. Repeating the quote doesn't contribute any further information. That was a rather strange thing to do. And I didn't "skim over" anything. That was the very context in which I intended my comment. My point was very simple. That the statement:
"... as a relative output outside of the natural chemistry of the Earth (the effect of living creatures and other processes) it does count as a deposit which changes the chemistry of the surrounding environment, ergo, pollution."
... and other statements of that nature, can apply to MANY things, other than just carbon dioxide, that we also do not normally consider to be pollutants. And that therefore singling out carbon dioxide in that context is hardly justified. Amazing that you missed that. I felt I had explained it in pretty simple English.
And further, that if you are going to call CO2 a pollutant in that context, then you must logically accept that we can also call other substances that we do not normally consider to be pollutants, to also be pollutants in the same context. That is to say, in the context of "... a relative output outside the natural chemistry of the Earth."
"You didn't say anything about poisons here."
Sheesh. Do you even know what the word analogy means? For someone who obviously considers himself to be a smart person, you sure seem to have some reading comprehension issues.
"It doesn't matter who you are. I see you as another string of characters on website, an avatar for the logic you present. "
If that is so, then how do you justify the following comment?
"Unlike you, however, I've actually thrown in some genuine, peer reviewed research."
Together, those statements make no sense. You have contradicted yourself. If you neither know or care who I am, what are you doing making unfounded claims like "Unlike you, I've..." ???
"As I've said recently regarding ad hominem attack on Richard Stallman sometime in the past couple of months on slashdot, it doesn't matter who the person is."
I will point out that I stated this very thing (although not in exactly the same words) elsewhere here on Slashdot today. I do understand this, quite well. But that has nothing to do with the point you seem to be trying to address. The actual point was: if you don't know who I am, how do you presume to know what papers I have published?
"You did nothing to actually contribute to the conversation."
You have demonstrated quite clearly (and publicly) that you did not understand the point I was making. It's pretty arrogant to presume to know how much it has added, from the point of view of some other reader. You are not the only one here.
"You haven't shown a weakness of logic on my part that didn't require altering the context..."
Nonsense. I did not alter the context. I was specifically addressing the context that you, yourself, laid out. I was making the point that in that context, things other than carbon dioxide -- things that in other contexts we might not consider to be pollutants -- can ALSO be considered pollutants. And that was also the point of my analogy: that such definitions are context-sensitive. Using the very context you used (" a relative output outside of the natural chemistry..."), I can define pretty much anything I want to be a pollutant. Therefore, that argument is very far from compelling.
The salient point here is that YOUR context, the very context you described, is not the same context as was clearly being used in the original letter you were discussing, when it mentioned "pollutant". So if anyone is guilty of shifting context, it is you.
"If you felt my response to your apparent i
"The chemistry of the Earth's natural cycles and environs are identifiably altered under increased carbon dioxide uptake. Carbon dioxide forms acids with constituent components of the atmosphere, soil and water. Water is chemically neutral and oxygen readily balances out to the available reactions, contributing nothing to net chemical cycles on the Earth outside of return carbon that has been out of the cycles for thousands and millions of years (see Cretaceous Period vs the logic of biofuels and green chemistry)."
Water dissolves a great many compounds. Oxygen forms oxides and other compounds (in general, the more readily the higher the concentration).
Seriously. My comment was about your characterization of carbon dioxide as a pollutant. I do not not dispute that it is, technically, but putting it that way is rather disingenuous. Many other otherwise innocuous substances could be considered to be pollutants in precisely the same context.
As an analogy: drink enough water and it will kill you. Breathing pure oxygen (or pure CO2 for that matter) for very long will do the same. Therefore, water, oxygen, and CO2 are all poisons. That is a true statement, but by itself is rather misleading.
All I am saying is that CO2 is a "pollutant" in the sense that water and oxygen are "poisons". That is to say: under what we generally consider to be normal circumstances, they really aren't. They may be, in a technical sense, but only technically. I just don't think it's justified to single out CO2 in this context and define it as a particular pollutant, as distinct from other chemicals, because so many other things can be viewed in exactly the same light. It may be 100% true, but it's a misleading statement.
"Unlike you, however, I've actually thrown in some genuine, peer reviewed research."
Are you sure of that? You do not know who I am, nor do I care to tell you. Nice guess, and statistics favor it as a guess, but I would not be quite so confident if I were you.
Nice list of references, too. But I have to wonder why you feel the need to brag.
"As usual you don't understand."
Hahahaha! That's really rich! The pot calling the kettle black.
Have you ever heard of the Dunningâ"Kruger effect?
If I were you, I'd give it a good read, and think about it some.