i suddenly remembered, something those of you from elsewhere may not know, that a lot of the lighthouses up here in the new englands are nowadays automatic, solar powered. and i would imagine their operation is pretty much required to be reliable, every night. and the amount of power delivered is not trivial, i would guess.
no kidding. imagine if the engineering geniuses behind the soviet union had announced a grand plan to end world hunger by opening up the vast plains of siberia to farming by burning enough fossil fuels to add enough carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to raise the earth's temperature? you think the rightwingers would dither about how it couldn't possibly work, and humans couldn't possibly change the climate, and how the sun determines the climate, and how anyway, it would probably benefit mankind? they'd scream for a nuclear strike, right now.
which goes to prove the old adage: the rightwing supports the right of private entities to do things to America and Americans which, if done by another country, they would consider an act of war.
but "agendas to gain additional funding and status" involve things like "proving that idiot gabnowskowich at university of london doesn't know a gymnosperm tree ring from a stress artifact in a cycad trunk", rather than proving that petroleum will destroy the earth. and the granting agencies operate on that basis. in fact, the majority of the calls that "more research on global warming is needed" come from the unbelievers; who then argue six months later that the scientists are just doing it because that's where the grant money is.
look; if my agenda is to get home from work and have dinner, and somebody else's agenda is to smack me over the head and take my wallet, even though we each have an agenda, it's not exactly symmetrical.
i wasn't saying scientists fund their own research, i was saying that organizations such as Union of Concerned Scientists don't fund scientists; scientists in fact contribute to them. on the other hand, rightwing organizations such as the Heartland institute or the TASSC most definitely do pay handsome fees to scientists who sing their tune. i'm not implying that there is a deliberate lie for pay, but as noted before, it's pretty hard to convince somebody of something when heir paycheck requires it to be false.
as for the agenda of every funding organization, what is the agenda of the nsf? noaa? nasa? it isn't obvious to me that these organizations are dedicated to stamping out fossil fuels for some reason, and will invent global warming if that's the only way to do so. on the other hand, i feel the interest of shell, exxonmobil, et al in sponsoring research is fairly clear. furthermore, the public funded research gets published whether the outcome is pro or con; private research is very rarely published if it's contrary to the sponsor's interests; it's their intellectual property to do with as they wish. (not just in climate, but in all fields; food/nutrition, drugs, etc.)
al gore's sponsored research? what, the almighty powerful and vastly wealthy windmill cartel that pays al gore to put forward its agenda?
here's the deal: outfits like shell and exxonmobil fund scientists who agree with their agenda; whereas outfits which attempt to fight global warming and/or protect the environment are funded by scientists who agree with their agenda. quite a fundamental difference, really.
or you could take the frigging bus and/or train and tell your idiot government representatives on the state and federal level to get their asses out of their freebie suburbans with their 80 mph police escorted convoys and make the damn bus and train structure usable.
the findings this guy was found guilty of are not terribly terrible. putting a student's name on a paper even though he didn't do the work?
and stuff gets published all the time which doesn't stand up to attempts to replicate it. anybody old enough to remember the famous experiments where planaria could "learn" by being fed ground up planaria who had learned something? haven't seen much reference to those lately?
that said, his research does seem to be a crock.
take for example the "no homos!" thing. not far away in the same old testament, it tells you to not where clothes of mixed fabric (wool and linen, for example) in very similar terms. and, it tells you to build a parapet around your roof, so people don't fall off. again, in no uncertain terms.
yet, your average bible thumper reads the three, picks one, and decides god was just kidding about the others. now, you can't say that it's just too impractical; observant jews in fact take the mixed fabrics thing very seriously, and there are labs around which will test it for you/them. and you can't argue that the homosexuality thing makes obvious sense whereas the parapet around the roof doesn't.
but, mostly, i think it's sacrilege to presume to pick and choose which parts of the bible are serious; that's basically setting your judgement above god's, and the folks who do so yet claim to be real bible believers are therefore dismissable, and have absolutely no right to advise anybody else, let alone claim the right to make laws.
i think maybe on make.com a while ago i saw something about converting them to radio astronomy, for cheap? maybe that was the small dishes? i'm too lazy to look it up.
and concrete production is the second largest carbon dioxide generator after energy production; lots of concrete in a nuclear power plant. and at current prices, new plants won't be competitive enough in price without huge government subsidies; in addition to the problem that nobody will build them without a subsidy in the form of government-sponsored indemnity insurance, since no insurer will touch them. that plus the large time lag before they save a single molecule of carbon dioxide to account for the tons generated by their construction.
on the other hand, updating the ones now running, keeping them going past their scheduled mothballing date, and relying on them more heavily is pretty much unavoidable at this point, to meet any sort of reasonable carbon reduction scheme.
it's pretty apparent that to be effective, this will have to basically rebuild the entire petroleum industry, more or less, in reverse, in order to bury as much carbon as we are now pumping up. Then we would need to bury some more to account for that generated in building all this infrastructure, and some more on a continuing basis to account for all the carbon dioxide generated in running the thing.
other than that, it's clearly the magic bullet, though, if only those liberals weren't so wacky, eh?
surveys find that the 6% of online users most stupid enough to believe that attractive women they don't know are emailing them in search of hot monkey love are too stupid to earn more than $40k per year.
so, if i replace the incandescents with fluorescents, that will mean i waste less energy as heat; so i will have more money to spend... to heat my house. of course in the summer i don't need the heat. and i don't need the light either, until it's late enough that it cools off.
that said, i already replaced all my incandescents with fluorescents. i just am not sure why.
to think I stuck with comcast tv/internet when i moved despite the dish tv antenna already on the house, because i figured that cable had to be more reliable than a satellite connection. i'm still intermittent, despite having had the drop cable from the pole to the house replaced; i assume that more of the neighborhood cable needs replacement. Then it struck me; when your major real asset is the network of installed cable, and an unknown amount of it is either too old or too decrepit or both to handle the bandwidth you're peddling now; i'd be whistling past the graveyard too.
while i'm at it, who designed the interface for comcast tv? nuff said.
and their DVR; functions as well as if it were running windows. nuff said.
but the customer service is what's great. friend of mine moved, got comcast internet/tv/phone. so far so good. hey, why not push your luck, get them to install a wireless network. haha. worked well enough for the tech to leave; that was it, though. followed literally hours and hours of being transferred between tech support for the network; the internet gateway; they even transferred to Macafee support. and round and round and round. Finally, four days later, another tech came out and plugged the network adapter into the USB port in back of the machine (Dell, BTW) instead of the front. bingo. any of you in the same boat, there's hours of phone service time saved.
So I'm just mulling it over; is it less trouble to have comcast come out to take another whack at my system, or just go to dish and forget it?
Wikipedia has followed the trajectory of all such inspired movements, from Christianity to the counterculture to skateboarding:
First, an inspired group of exceptional people, each of whom can see the final goal and guide their actions thereby; then, their accomplishments catch the imagination of
the vast majority who don't quite "get it", so that their contributions have to be managed and coordinated, and bureaucracy sets in; then the final stage, when incompetents, people whose thought processes are disordered for one reason or another, and outright criminals and sociopaths see new, relatively undefended territory to move into.
Slashdot Mirror
i suddenly remembered, something those of you from elsewhere may not know, that a lot of the lighthouses up here in the new englands are nowadays automatic, solar powered. and i would imagine their operation is pretty much required to be reliable, every night. and the amount of power delivered is not trivial, i would guess.
no kidding. imagine if the engineering geniuses behind the soviet union had announced a grand plan to end world hunger by opening up the vast plains of siberia to farming by burning enough fossil fuels to add enough carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to raise the earth's temperature? you think the rightwingers would dither about how it couldn't possibly work, and humans couldn't possibly change the climate, and how the sun determines the climate, and how anyway, it would probably benefit mankind? they'd scream for a nuclear strike, right now. which goes to prove the old adage: the rightwing supports the right of private entities to do things to America and Americans which, if done by another country, they would consider an act of war.
but "agendas to gain additional funding and status" involve things like "proving that idiot gabnowskowich at university of london doesn't know a gymnosperm tree ring from a stress artifact in a cycad trunk", rather than proving that petroleum will destroy the earth. and the granting agencies operate on that basis. in fact, the majority of the calls that "more research on global warming is needed" come from the unbelievers; who then argue six months later that the scientists are just doing it because that's where the grant money is. look; if my agenda is to get home from work and have dinner, and somebody else's agenda is to smack me over the head and take my wallet, even though we each have an agenda, it's not exactly symmetrical.
i wasn't saying scientists fund their own research, i was saying that organizations such as Union of Concerned Scientists don't fund scientists; scientists in fact contribute to them. on the other hand, rightwing organizations such as the Heartland institute or the TASSC most definitely do pay handsome fees to scientists who sing their tune. i'm not implying that there is a deliberate lie for pay, but as noted before, it's pretty hard to convince somebody of something when heir paycheck requires it to be false. as for the agenda of every funding organization, what is the agenda of the nsf? noaa? nasa? it isn't obvious to me that these organizations are dedicated to stamping out fossil fuels for some reason, and will invent global warming if that's the only way to do so. on the other hand, i feel the interest of shell, exxonmobil, et al in sponsoring research is fairly clear. furthermore, the public funded research gets published whether the outcome is pro or con; private research is very rarely published if it's contrary to the sponsor's interests; it's their intellectual property to do with as they wish. (not just in climate, but in all fields; food/nutrition, drugs, etc.)
al gore's sponsored research? what, the almighty powerful and vastly wealthy windmill cartel that pays al gore to put forward its agenda? here's the deal: outfits like shell and exxonmobil fund scientists who agree with their agenda; whereas outfits which attempt to fight global warming and/or protect the environment are funded by scientists who agree with their agenda. quite a fundamental difference, really.
you put the lime in the coconut you drink them both up
do not become romantically involved with each other.
or you could take the frigging bus and/or train and tell your idiot government representatives on the state and federal level to get their asses out of their freebie suburbans with their 80 mph police escorted convoys and make the damn bus and train structure usable.
the findings this guy was found guilty of are not terribly terrible. putting a student's name on a paper even though he didn't do the work? and stuff gets published all the time which doesn't stand up to attempts to replicate it. anybody old enough to remember the famous experiments where planaria could "learn" by being fed ground up planaria who had learned something? haven't seen much reference to those lately? that said, his research does seem to be a crock.
waterloo's been a hot school for physics for a loooong time.
take for example the "no homos!" thing. not far away in the same old testament, it tells you to not where clothes of mixed fabric (wool and linen, for example) in very similar terms. and, it tells you to build a parapet around your roof, so people don't fall off. again, in no uncertain terms. yet, your average bible thumper reads the three, picks one, and decides god was just kidding about the others. now, you can't say that it's just too impractical; observant jews in fact take the mixed fabrics thing very seriously, and there are labs around which will test it for you/them. and you can't argue that the homosexuality thing makes obvious sense whereas the parapet around the roof doesn't. but, mostly, i think it's sacrilege to presume to pick and choose which parts of the bible are serious; that's basically setting your judgement above god's, and the folks who do so yet claim to be real bible believers are therefore dismissable, and have absolutely no right to advise anybody else, let alone claim the right to make laws.
i think maybe on make.com a while ago i saw something about converting them to radio astronomy, for cheap? maybe that was the small dishes? i'm too lazy to look it up.
now tell us why voters select candidates with these traits.
The late 20th century saw capitalism triumph over communism. The early 21st century is seeing capitalism triumph over democracy.
and concrete production is the second largest carbon dioxide generator after energy production; lots of concrete in a nuclear power plant. and at current prices, new plants won't be competitive enough in price without huge government subsidies; in addition to the problem that nobody will build them without a subsidy in the form of government-sponsored indemnity insurance, since no insurer will touch them. that plus the large time lag before they save a single molecule of carbon dioxide to account for the tons generated by their construction. on the other hand, updating the ones now running, keeping them going past their scheduled mothballing date, and relying on them more heavily is pretty much unavoidable at this point, to meet any sort of reasonable carbon reduction scheme.
it's pretty apparent that to be effective, this will have to basically rebuild the entire petroleum industry, more or less, in reverse, in order to bury as much carbon as we are now pumping up. Then we would need to bury some more to account for that generated in building all this infrastructure, and some more on a continuing basis to account for all the carbon dioxide generated in running the thing. other than that, it's clearly the magic bullet, though, if only those liberals weren't so wacky, eh?
surveys find that the 6% of online users most stupid enough to believe that attractive women they don't know are emailing them in search of hot monkey love are too stupid to earn more than $40k per year.
microsoft windows users revolt over vista being available.
so, if i replace the incandescents with fluorescents, that will mean i waste less energy as heat; so i will have more money to spend... to heat my house. of course in the summer i don't need the heat. and i don't need the light either, until it's late enough that it cools off.
that said, i already replaced all my incandescents with fluorescents. i just am not sure why.
to think I stuck with comcast tv/internet when i moved despite the dish tv antenna already on the house, because i figured that cable had to be more reliable than a satellite connection. i'm still intermittent, despite having had the drop cable from the pole to the house replaced; i assume that more of the neighborhood cable needs replacement. Then it struck me; when your major real asset is the network of installed cable, and an unknown amount of it is either too old or too decrepit or both to handle the bandwidth you're peddling now; i'd be whistling past the graveyard too. while i'm at it, who designed the interface for comcast tv? nuff said. and their DVR; functions as well as if it were running windows. nuff said. but the customer service is what's great. friend of mine moved, got comcast internet/tv/phone. so far so good. hey, why not push your luck, get them to install a wireless network. haha. worked well enough for the tech to leave; that was it, though. followed literally hours and hours of being transferred between tech support for the network; the internet gateway; they even transferred to Macafee support. and round and round and round. Finally, four days later, another tech came out and plugged the network adapter into the USB port in back of the machine (Dell, BTW) instead of the front. bingo. any of you in the same boat, there's hours of phone service time saved. So I'm just mulling it over; is it less trouble to have comcast come out to take another whack at my system, or just go to dish and forget it?
Wikipedia has followed the trajectory of all such inspired movements, from Christianity to the counterculture to skateboarding: First, an inspired group of exceptional people, each of whom can see the final goal and guide their actions thereby; then, their accomplishments catch the imagination of the vast majority who don't quite "get it", so that their contributions have to be managed and coordinated, and bureaucracy sets in; then the final stage, when incompetents, people whose thought processes are disordered for one reason or another, and outright criminals and sociopaths see new, relatively undefended territory to move into.