If you've read the series, then you know the time-line comes pre-jiggled. I'm not sure how you could get away with jiggling it much further without fucking things up.
It's also good to have read a lot of King's works when going through The Gunslinger series - it's King's "connect everything together" work, like Asimov did with the Foundation novels.
The Langoliers was one horrible mini-series adaptation, but I think that was mostly because of the extremely bad special effects with regard to the langoliers themselves.
They used low-budget CG (TV quality) in a time when even big-budget CG was terrible for anything remotely large on-screen.
The rest of the show was OK - not fantastic, but not horrendous either.
That can be extremely expensive, though, particularly if your individual sales tend to be small. Visa, for example, takes a 5-10% cut and has a minimum fee for each transaction. When you're selling something for $1-$2 that can mean 25%-50% of the entire sale just for credit card processing. I believe there are also annual fees and setup costs. It basically doubles a small operation's cost to do business just to be able to take credit cards.
I don't know what Markus is charging for his game, but since it's an Alpha version I imagine it's not more than a couple bucks.
That's utter bullshit. And they should know by now that it is not funny business, it's a popular game developed by one or two people. It can happen you know.
It sounds like a lot, but Greenland is fucking huge. Cutting the rate of melt in half is a very big deal, especially since it does not in any way take into account the rate of growth (glaciers grow and shrink every year with the seasons, this should be obvious).
It's quite possible that the halving of the melt rate puts Greenland's ice into a stable or even growing condition. It basically makes using Greenland as an example of the negative effects of climate change impossible until those questions are resolved.
I only read the first paragraph; I skimmed the rest of it and won't bother with it since it's obviously just conspiracy theory nonsense.
Anyway, the famous Hockey Stick graph is from a study that was simply a conglomeration of previous studies with no original research. In scientific circles they call this secondary research (primary research is done by the people actually pulling the ice cores and recording the sensor data), but apparently csicop.org considers it a "literature review".
I assume, then, that they discount the centerpiece to the AGW theory for the exact same reason, right? No? Oh, well then it sounds like biased bullshit to me.
Scientific consensus is one of the biggest roadblocks to advancement. In order to make a major theoretical leap in science you must commit career suicide. Hopefully indisputable proof is found within your lifetime, so you can be vindicated and enjoy a pleasant career. Many times this is not the case.
I'm not talking about the natural resistance to an unproven theory which should always be there. I'm talking about a dogmatic adherence to tradition that begins to change not when the evidence is interesting enough to be worth exploring, but when the evidence is so abundant it simply cannot be ignored any further.
This happens every single time, where some scientist is relegated to the realm of quackery and must suffer for decades until he can come up with so much evidence that he can no longer be ignored.
It really puts a lie to the idea that most scientists are objective and open minded and only seek the truth. The truth is most scientists only care about their own pet research, and will do everything in their power to discredit and marginalize any theory or data or individual that may threaten their work.
Also, every million years or so the Sahara holds two giant lakes that dwarf the combined volume of the Great Lakes, easily making them the top two lakes in the world. It becomes a lush, green paradise.
That graph is pretty interesting, but you can see the big jump in sea ice in 2009, 2010 is just riding that trend down.
What I find interesting is 2010 has the highest sea ice in a decade for the month of April and the lowest for the month of June, then back to just third lowest for September.
The best conclusion you can draw from this, I think, is that there is a lot of variability in the sea ice extent from year to year, but it generally stays pretty close in the short term.
You really need to brush up on what makes a claim valid or invalid.
A factual error (his measurement mistake) means the claim was never valid, even though it appeared to be valid at first.
It's not "valid until you find a problem", it's "valid or invalid". If it is valid, it cannot later become invalid. However, you can discover that it was never valid to begin with - it only appeared to be.
The IPCC's three invalid predictions were always invalid, observation bore that out. Were they valid, observation would have fallen within their predicted figures. Obviously they are missing something, which shows their claims were never valid to begin with.
I repeat, at no point were those particular claims ever valid. There was a point where they did appear to be valid, but it turns out they were based on insufficient data to come to a valid conclusion.
New data doesn't transform formerly valid claims into invalid claims, new data shows that previous claims were never valid to begin with.
Newtonian physics is a perfect example. Newtonian physics are invalid. This has been proven without a doubt. We now know that he was wrong. Does this make Newtonian physics useless? Does it mean we can never use Newtonian physics for anything practical again? No, of course not. Newton's equations are so close to correct that you only get meaningful errors when looking at extreme distances and timescales, and then only when your measuring instruments are extremely precise. He was wrong, but by so little it's no wonder it took us 300 years to discover it. As such, we still use Newtonian physics for practical real-world work, even though we know he got it wrong.
That's why scientists are looking for solutions to these problems - because they know they don't know the real truth.
That's a terrible idea, Mars's core is solid and thus has no magnetic field.
Unless...
You aren't suggesting there is a secret mission to drop a million nukes Mars's core to re-heat, melt, and therefore re-generate the magnetic field are you?
I've dreamed of mini-fusion engines ever since I read the first Foundation novel.
Of course, that was shot to shit two decades ago by nuclear power alarmists. It's funny that these alarmists seem to be the exact same people, no matter what the issue is.
First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.
This seems to call into question the Hockey Stick graph, which is based largely on tree ring data except for the last 150 years.
Frankly, I would question any study that attempts to correlate data of two differing precisions without having data for both for the entire study as a matter of course, and I'm surprised so many people swallow it whole without question. Furthermore, statistics have never been proof in science. They can show you patterns and help you develop hypothesis and point you in a direction to look, but they prove nothing by themselves.
The real scientists, I'm sure, are doing exactly that. But that's not the bullshit we get in the media. I'm not interested in arguing your points, I was simply making my own point about the nature of the things we see and hear about climate change. It's a political hot-button and a potential gold mine. Climate scientists have a long way to go with regards to doing real science and getting real answers; most of what we see is just conjecture based on correlative data (to be fair, it's often strongly correlated). That is useless for developing policy, but it's how we tend to do everything.
Point #2, or the Hockey stick, considers more than just the last 10-15 years... To see the "stick" you have to look at the last 1000 years. Assuming measurements are proper, there is a noted effect in the last 100 years... Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on "proxy" indicators. There is a good size error field, which certainly contributes to the debate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm [bbc.co.uk]
First, the Hockey Stick graph is only based on about 500 years data. Second it is based on to very different data collection techniques - tree ring data for temperatures older than about 150 years, and direct measurements for the most recent 150 years. Why not use tree ring data all the way to the present to keep the data consistent? I'm not surprised that a more precise measuring method shows more drastic results for the last 150 years.
If you go back 1000 years you see things a little more clearly. If you go back 20,000 years the picture is entirely different. We're still at an average temperature for a warm period. We are not now even close to the hottest it has ever been since the last ice age.
Here is an excellent graph showing the last 20,000 year temperature history of the earth via ice cores from Greenland. It doesn't mean the hockey-stick is false - in fact that same website is talking about the dangers of climate change and has many of the other traditional AGW graphs to support that point.
In any case I have no doubt that AGW is at least true in part. The question is, what's the real damage? Is it actually something to be concerned about? Or is it within the Earth's normal range of climates? These are the questions that are only being speculated about, and there is no data at all to support the dire predictions of AGW alarmists.
Just look at the GoM spill - it's the largest in US history, predicted to be the greatest environmental disaster we have ever seen, yet five months in and it has caused a tiny fraction of the damage the much smaller Valdez spill caused.
That is what alarmist predictions get you - not much.
It's almost like "The Ministry of Truth" in Orwell's 1984 - it was the propaganda machine for the government, and therefor was responsible for spreading lies far and wide.
DHS is similar, though not exactly a polar opposite of what its Orwellian name would suggest. It spreads the feeling of security without securing anything. The guys who are actually doing anything to prevent terrorist attacks are folks like the CIA and FBI. DHS doesn't do shit.
For example, I know a guy who accidentally brought a box cutter in his carry-on at least half a dozen times when he was flying. It wasn't until he found it in the bottom of his bag that he realized it was there and removed it. That's the same damn weapon the 19 hijackers all used, yet here at least six of them would have gotten though.
And yet we have to take our shoes off, just in case someone put a bomb in our shoes. Give me a break.
Slashdot Mirror
Blain the Mono was one of my favorite parts.
If you've read the series, then you know the time-line comes pre-jiggled. I'm not sure how you could get away with jiggling it much further without fucking things up.
It's also good to have read a lot of King's works when going through The Gunslinger series - it's King's "connect everything together" work, like Asimov did with the Foundation novels.
The Langoliers was one horrible mini-series adaptation, but I think that was mostly because of the extremely bad special effects with regard to the langoliers themselves.
They used low-budget CG (TV quality) in a time when even big-budget CG was terrible for anything remotely large on-screen.
The rest of the show was OK - not fantastic, but not horrendous either.
That can be extremely expensive, though, particularly if your individual sales tend to be small. Visa, for example, takes a 5-10% cut and has a minimum fee for each transaction. When you're selling something for $1-$2 that can mean 25%-50% of the entire sale just for credit card processing. I believe there are also annual fees and setup costs. It basically doubles a small operation's cost to do business just to be able to take credit cards.
I don't know what Markus is charging for his game, but since it's an Alpha version I imagine it's not more than a couple bucks.
So being successful is now funny business?
That's utter bullshit. And they should know by now that it is not funny business, it's a popular game developed by one or two people. It can happen you know.
I think when there is a lot of money involved, they start to look for excuses to take the money.
See the $30k Katrina charity freeze posted just after your post.
Especially since they all have either a PayPal account or a credit card.
There is no legitimate reason for PayPal to keep the money, at all.
It will be theft, pure and simple.
Therefore they get to steal your money?
I don't follow...
It sounds like a lot, but Greenland is fucking huge. Cutting the rate of melt in half is a very big deal, especially since it does not in any way take into account the rate of growth (glaciers grow and shrink every year with the seasons, this should be obvious).
It's quite possible that the halving of the melt rate puts Greenland's ice into a stable or even growing condition. It basically makes using Greenland as an example of the negative effects of climate change impossible until those questions are resolved.
In other words, more study is needed.
I only read the first paragraph; I skimmed the rest of it and won't bother with it since it's obviously just conspiracy theory nonsense.
Anyway, the famous Hockey Stick graph is from a study that was simply a conglomeration of previous studies with no original research. In scientific circles they call this secondary research (primary research is done by the people actually pulling the ice cores and recording the sensor data), but apparently csicop.org considers it a "literature review".
I assume, then, that they discount the centerpiece to the AGW theory for the exact same reason, right? No? Oh, well then it sounds like biased bullshit to me.
98% of people die at some point in their lives.
I'm getting into the coffin business.
Consensus is a little different than peer review.
Scientific consensus is one of the biggest roadblocks to advancement. In order to make a major theoretical leap in science you must commit career suicide. Hopefully indisputable proof is found within your lifetime, so you can be vindicated and enjoy a pleasant career. Many times this is not the case.
I'm not talking about the natural resistance to an unproven theory which should always be there. I'm talking about a dogmatic adherence to tradition that begins to change not when the evidence is interesting enough to be worth exploring, but when the evidence is so abundant it simply cannot be ignored any further.
This happens every single time, where some scientist is relegated to the realm of quackery and must suffer for decades until he can come up with so much evidence that he can no longer be ignored.
It really puts a lie to the idea that most scientists are objective and open minded and only seek the truth. The truth is most scientists only care about their own pet research, and will do everything in their power to discredit and marginalize any theory or data or individual that may threaten their work.
Also, every million years or so the Sahara holds two giant lakes that dwarf the combined volume of the Great Lakes, easily making them the top two lakes in the world. It becomes a lush, green paradise.
That graph is pretty interesting, but you can see the big jump in sea ice in 2009, 2010 is just riding that trend down.
What I find interesting is 2010 has the highest sea ice in a decade for the month of April and the lowest for the month of June, then back to just third lowest for September.
The best conclusion you can draw from this, I think, is that there is a lot of variability in the sea ice extent from year to year, but it generally stays pretty close in the short term.
I can't see how it's a dire thing that ice which has been thinning for the past 10,000 years continues to thin.
Is there evidence that it is actually thinning faster than it was a thousand years ago? Or are we just measuring it better?
Come on, that was a statistics joke and a jab at the IPCC at the same time!
You really need to brush up on what makes a claim valid or invalid.
A factual error (his measurement mistake) means the claim was never valid, even though it appeared to be valid at first.
It's not "valid until you find a problem", it's "valid or invalid". If it is valid, it cannot later become invalid. However, you can discover that it was never valid to begin with - it only appeared to be.
The IPCC's three invalid predictions were always invalid, observation bore that out. Were they valid, observation would have fallen within their predicted figures. Obviously they are missing something, which shows their claims were never valid to begin with.
I repeat, at no point were those particular claims ever valid. There was a point where they did appear to be valid, but it turns out they were based on insufficient data to come to a valid conclusion.
New data doesn't transform formerly valid claims into invalid claims, new data shows that previous claims were never valid to begin with.
Newtonian physics is a perfect example. Newtonian physics are invalid. This has been proven without a doubt. We now know that he was wrong. Does this make Newtonian physics useless? Does it mean we can never use Newtonian physics for anything practical again? No, of course not. Newton's equations are so close to correct that you only get meaningful errors when looking at extreme distances and timescales, and then only when your measuring instruments are extremely precise. He was wrong, but by so little it's no wonder it took us 300 years to discover it. As such, we still use Newtonian physics for practical real-world work, even though we know he got it wrong.
That's why scientists are looking for solutions to these problems - because they know they don't know the real truth.
That's a terrible idea, Mars's core is solid and thus has no magnetic field.
Unless...
You aren't suggesting there is a secret mission to drop a million nukes Mars's core to re-heat, melt, and therefore re-generate the magnetic field are you?
I mean, it's crazy, but it just might work!
I've dreamed of mini-fusion engines ever since I read the first Foundation novel.
Of course, that was shot to shit two decades ago by nuclear power alarmists. It's funny that these alarmists seem to be the exact same people, no matter what the issue is.
From one of your newscientist.com links:
First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.
This seems to call into question the Hockey Stick graph, which is based largely on tree ring data except for the last 150 years.
Frankly, I would question any study that attempts to correlate data of two differing precisions without having data for both for the entire study as a matter of course, and I'm surprised so many people swallow it whole without question. Furthermore, statistics have never been proof in science. They can show you patterns and help you develop hypothesis and point you in a direction to look, but they prove nothing by themselves.
The real scientists, I'm sure, are doing exactly that. But that's not the bullshit we get in the media. I'm not interested in arguing your points, I was simply making my own point about the nature of the things we see and hear about climate change. It's a political hot-button and a potential gold mine. Climate scientists have a long way to go with regards to doing real science and getting real answers; most of what we see is just conjecture based on correlative data (to be fair, it's often strongly correlated). That is useless for developing policy, but it's how we tend to do everything.
Point #2, or the Hockey stick, considers more than just the last 10-15 years... To see the "stick" you have to look at the last 1000 years. Assuming measurements are proper, there is a noted effect in the last 100 years... Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on "proxy" indicators. There is a good size error field, which certainly contributes to the debate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm [bbc.co.uk]
First, the Hockey Stick graph is only based on about 500 years data. Second it is based on to very different data collection techniques - tree ring data for temperatures older than about 150 years, and direct measurements for the most recent 150 years. Why not use tree ring data all the way to the present to keep the data consistent? I'm not surprised that a more precise measuring method shows more drastic results for the last 150 years.
If you go back 1000 years you see things a little more clearly. If you go back 20,000 years the picture is entirely different. We're still at an average temperature for a warm period. We are not now even close to the hottest it has ever been since the last ice age.
Here is an excellent graph showing the last 20,000 year temperature history of the earth via ice cores from Greenland. It doesn't mean the hockey-stick is false - in fact that same website is talking about the dangers of climate change and has many of the other traditional AGW graphs to support that point.
In any case I have no doubt that AGW is at least true in part. The question is, what's the real damage? Is it actually something to be concerned about? Or is it within the Earth's normal range of climates? These are the questions that are only being speculated about, and there is no data at all to support the dire predictions of AGW alarmists.
Just look at the GoM spill - it's the largest in US history, predicted to be the greatest environmental disaster we have ever seen, yet five months in and it has caused a tiny fraction of the damage the much smaller Valdez spill caused.
That is what alarmist predictions get you - not much.
See GP's post.
I've got news for you bro, a thermometer is a sensor.
Well considering it was a failed audit, and not just a failed scan, I'm sure they know what they are doing.
It's almost like "The Ministry of Truth" in Orwell's 1984 - it was the propaganda machine for the government, and therefor was responsible for spreading lies far and wide.
DHS is similar, though not exactly a polar opposite of what its Orwellian name would suggest. It spreads the feeling of security without securing anything. The guys who are actually doing anything to prevent terrorist attacks are folks like the CIA and FBI. DHS doesn't do shit.
For example, I know a guy who accidentally brought a box cutter in his carry-on at least half a dozen times when he was flying. It wasn't until he found it in the bottom of his bag that he realized it was there and removed it. That's the same damn weapon the 19 hijackers all used, yet here at least six of them would have gotten though.
And yet we have to take our shoes off, just in case someone put a bomb in our shoes. Give me a break.
Flash is a failure on Android? Since when?
It works great on my phone.