Except that the milk contains trace amounts of BGH
Studies that indicate that haven't been successfully replicated. And BGH doesn't survive the human stomach; it's inactivated by stomach pH. BGH isn't anything that isn't naturally in cows already; they're just adding more of it.
And you can always go buy organic milk if you're paranoid. That really flies in the face of contention that consumers "don't have any choice", doesn't it?
If you say that its irrational for me to want to know what is in my food then you aren't worth talking to.
Genes are in your food already; they always have been. Bacillus thuringensis isn't anything you haven't already been exposed to, assuming you've ever been outside. I'm not saying that you shouldn't find out what's in your food, and indeed, I've never said that. But that's not what you're doing. You're letting anti-science vested interests lie to you about what's in your food.
Find out what's in your food, if you're interested. What you're doing right now is just making up paranoid stories.
Just another example of a horrible thing to do to the food supply and not tell anyone about it.
Do you have any evidence that it was "horrible?" Because there's no verifiable scientific difference between milk from BGH-treated cows and untreated cows.
Just another example of your irrational fear towards the agricultural developments that are required to feed a planet of 6.5 billion people. I guess it'd be better, in your world, if milk cost 10 dollars a gallon and millions of people starved to death (plus the ones that already do, of course.)
But gratz on ignoring all my other points. You really do keep your mind uncluttered of any inconvenient, contradictory facts, don't you?
They were not manipulating DNA the same way Monsanto does.
Genetic engineering is just like selective breeding, only you skip the part where you have to wait for random mutation to provide the sequences you want and insert them directly.
Genes are genes. It doesn't matter if the genes are from jellyfish, or bacillus thuringensis, or random mutation. DNA is DNA. That's why genetic engineering works. If you contend differently, you're saying that random mutation can never add new genes or new information - in which case I'm talking to a creationist, and who gives a damn what you think?
So did the people who invented asbestos believe it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Uh-huh. So, one guy was wrong once; therefore, everyone is always wrong? You're an idiot.
Try to figure out which milk has BGH in it, and which doesn't.
BGH isn't genetic engineering; you're an idiot. Genetic engineering could, in fact, obviate the need to dose cows with BHG, resulting in safer milk.
If you can even drink milk, thank a mutation - magnified in peoples of Indian, Northern European, etc. descent by a natural process of genetic engineering called "natural selection."
It's all the same. Genes are genes and it doesn't matter how they come about. There's no difference between inserting the Bt genes into corn and just waiting around for them to develop the same protein by random mutation; aside from the fact that the latter takes a million years or so longer than the former.
Right. 7000 years ago the native americans created it in laboratories under a microscope.
Their laboratories were their fields. Look, if you don't believe that corn didn't just evolve that way, but had to be reshaped by humans 7500 years ago, look it up. But I guess there really are people who don't know anything about their food except that it comes from the supermarket.
Obviously you know this for sure and I should trust that you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing.
I do know it for sure. The Bt delta endotoxin is inactivated by the low pH in the stomachs of mammals. The reason it works on pest insect larva is because they have a basic gut pH.
It's really basic chemistry. Unless you're saying that there are humans out there walking around with NaOH instead of HCl in their stomachs, the Bt endotoxin is known to have no toxicity to humans.
Give people a choice, and nobody will buy this shit anymore.
They do have a choice; they've always had a choice. The farmers buy GM corn because it's cheaper to grow, the yields are greater, and it's much, much safer for the environment than repeated pesticide application.
Personally, I'd rather that we didn't poison our lakes and streams just to pander to your irrational fear and loathing of science and genetics. ZOMG! It's got GEEENES in it! OH NOES!
The point should be that genetic modification of our food isn't worth the risk.
Where do you think corn came from in the first place, genius? Do you think it just evolved to produce 2-3 ears of bright yellow corn just perfect for butter and salt?
Before corn was genetically engineered - by selective breeding by Meso-American farmers - you wouldn't have been able to distinguish corn from the crabgrass in your lawn. And it was just about as nutritious to eat.
They can't do that because we've got along just fine for what a hundred thousand years or so now without them.
Are you aware that we're feeding more than one billion people, currently, who would have starved to death if not for modern advances in agriculture techniques? Wikipedia "Norman Borlaug."
Doing it the old-fashioned way is no longer adequate to support the human population. It hasn't been for over 40 years. And every GM modification we put into foods - with absolutely no danger of mammalian toxicity - replaces the need to spray chemical pesticides, some of which in full concentration could kill every man, woman, and child on the Eastern Seaboard if you dropped a jug of it into the Catskill mountains reservoir.
And that's the pests that we can spray for. Subterranean root pests are extraordinarily hard to control chemically, because they're protected by the soil; but GM'ing harmless resistance factors into the roots is a very successful - and eco-friendly - strategy.
The science simply doesn't support a ban on GM foods. And really if we banned foods that had been subject to genetic tinkering there would be absolutely no crops left for you to eat. Every crop we grow has been genetically altered by human beings over the course of human agriculture. The legal concerns, on the other hand, are very troubling indeed, even to me, a relentless GM food booster.
I would imagine the makers of the GM crops would squash any further studies.
Well, I worked for the USDA Agricultural Research Service doing studies on GM crops, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that when Monsanto had complaints about us doing studies that would have undermined some of the claims of their products, we told them - with the full force of the law - that they could go fuck themselves. They're legally required to submit samples of their GM products to USDA testing if they want EPA approval to go to market, so they didn't have any power to undermine our research agenda.
Anyway, the point was that if bad side effects of the GM crops came up, and there were very few normal crops left due to cross pollination, we would be shit out of luck and a lot of people might starve.
A massive crop failure would be a big deal, sure; but it would just be a matter of pulling some seeds out of one of the national USDA germplasm repositories and basically "rebooting" the corn crop from a "backup" the next season. Again, an untrivial task, but at least we're not talking about the accidental extinction of Zea mays mays or something.
Not to mention it's been shown in some studies that GM crops have nasty side effects like having pollen that kills butterflies.
It's been one study, actually; and the results were never replicated.
It's really impossible for them to do so, actually, since the pollen of a Bt crop doesn't express the Bt protein that would be lethal to lepidopterans.
Wow. I think it's staggering that the burden of proving permission for access to technology is far, far greater than for access to a woman's vagina.
Maybe that's a defense strategy, though. "C'mon, your Honor! Just sitting at the coffeehouse, broadcasting its SSID all over the place like that? Did you see how it was dressed? It was asking for it!"
Unless you can demonstrate how your purchase of that vehicle is going to reduce the federal government's cost of doing business by the amount of your tax credit, you're just asking everyone else in the country to write you a rebate check out of their own income.
You fail accounting. Reducing your tax liability is reducing costs, and it's not a "rebate check from everybody else" for two reasons:
1) The government's expenditures are not limited to tax revenue. 2) We wouldn't describe me using a coupon to reduce my cable bill "getting a rebate check from the CEO of Time Warner."
Other people's taxes don't go up because you buy a Prius, because government tax rates are determined by legislature, not by government expenditure.
We wasn't stopping anyone from doing anything, he wasn't oppressing anyone, he was saying something many people don't agree with, and how people handle that is the real test of the constitution
Let's put you to the test - the test of actually knowing what the Constitution says.
Point to the part of the US Constitution that guarantees your right to be a nationally-syndicated talk show host. Oh, you don't see it in there?
Imus can say whatever the hell he likes. The US constitution doesn't immunize him from the consequences of his speech - like, for instance, people deciding that they don't want to buy the products that advertise during his show. Like, for instance, NBC and CBS deciding that they don't want to pay his syndicate to broadcast his program.
Free speech doesn't mean everybody else has to STFU. Free speech just means that the government can't lock your ass up for disagreeing with it. Free speech means you don't have to shut your mouth; it doesn't mean other people are prevented from shutting their ears.
While the comments posted against Kathy Sierra are despicable, I really feel that they are quite empty threats by a lonely, angry, frustrated, and upset individual.
Yeah, I mean it's not like any of these crazy people have ever become so obsessed with somebody they saw on the internet that they tracked them down and killed them, right?
Oh, wait. What a world of naivete you must live in where no man has committed a violent act against a strange woman for no reason.
Evolution doesn't quite cover the very first proteins assembling, however, it applies 100% from that point on.
That's exactly what I said. You replied in such a way that it seemed like you were implying that evolution does cover the formation of the universe and the origins of life; that's why you were asked where you got such crazy ideas. Creationists are the ones who typically suggest that evolution is the explanation for everything.
Well, except for the fact that here you're saying "ignorant" whereas before you said "gibbering idiot,"
Parent used them as synonyms; I'm just continuing the same usage for clarity. For my own word choice, I would stick with "ignorant."
And the ignorant shouldn't complain about being recognized as ignorant. They should correct their ignorance.
Maybe you would say that my insistence on at least a modicum of respect for the humanity (if not the correctness) of huge groups of people is still reflective of some sort of ignorance.
I doubt it, but honestly, I'm not sure what would prompt someone to excercise such intense righteous indignation on behalf of someone else. I suspect you're simply addicted to being righteously indignant.
This questionable display of reading comprehension
Yeah, about your reading comprehension... maybe you noticed that I was just using a term the parent used first?
Man, some people. I thought my point was pretty clear that it's fairly ridiculous to call foul on calling someone ignorant just because they have a different view, when it's obvious that they themselves only hold that view out of ignorance. In other words you shouldn't try to refute accusations that you yourself prove true.
But... neither is society going to hell in a handbasket because not enough people believe in evolution. It's okay if your auto mechanic believes something different from you. Your software isn't any better or worse because an evolutionist|creationist wrote it.
No. But it is the case that my car isn't going to get repaired by a mechanic who believes that the engine is just a hampster on a wheel; and my software isn't going to compile when it's written by the guy who thinks it's possible to write a general halting program. And it's really gonna be a cold day in hell before I allow a doctor near me who rejects the biological origin of the human body.
I don't buy maps from people who believe in a flat Earth, either. These aren't just wacky beliefs we're talking about; we're talking about a lot of people who are basing their professional conclusions on things that just aren't true.
I don't believe in Evolution. I haven't seen enough facts to support it. I hold the same to be true for all mechanisms whereby the earth, life, and the universe were created.
Wow. I love when people talk about how arrogant it is to accuse people of being gibbering idiots, and then go on to prove what gibbering idiots they are? Arrogant? Seems more like prescient.
Evolution isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe. It's not really an explanation for the origin of life, either. It's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by means of mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection.
And to the extent that a scientific model can be proven, evolution has been proven. Life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve (we know that from the fossil record and from continuing observations.) The theory of evolution tells us how that evolution happened. If you haven't "seen the evidence", then it's because you've never been in a biology classroom, or because you don't even understand what you're looking for evidence of.
How can you be so sure?
Who has to be sure? You need to accept uncertainty into your life. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. There are questions in biology that evolution doesn't yet answer. Thank goodness, there's a lot of biologists who would be out of work, otherwise.
Your attitude about the skeptics is "well, tough."
My attitude towards skeptics is "here's the evidence." If that's not enough to convince them, or they refuse to even look at it (like somebody else I'm debating in this thread) then it's obvious that I'm not dealing with a skeptic at all, but somebody who's already made up their mind and won't ever change it.
Truth is truth, but how you deliver the truth has a lot to do with how many buy into it.
Granted, and there's a lot of people who are misinformed about the science, but that has a lot more to do with things like:
1) the campaign of misinformation promulgated by energy industries to obscure the science; 2) conspiracy theories by right-wing entertainment figures; 3) a credulous media that cleaves to false balance by giving GW deniers the same emphasis as consensus science
than it has anything to do with the enthusiasm of climatologists and other interested parties. People don't ignore the issue because they see someone raising an alarm and then say to themselves "hrm, the fact that this guy is raising the alarm means I can ignore him"; they're ignoring the issue because of a massive campaign of misinformation enabled by a lazy and complacent media. A perfect example of this is the article at the top of this thread.
Those who are skeptical of the neutrality of the research have been given a reason to doubt.
A false reason, as I've spent several messages proving to you.
It would be better for those that want something done to not sound alarmist.
If there's no reason for alarm, why do anything? Sometimes there's a good reason for alarm, and if the realistic likelyhood is a 20-ft rise in ocean levels by 2100 that inundates hundreds of densly-populated cities worldwide, how do you relay that information without sounding "alarmist"?
Sure, we need to do something, but it's not going to happen without the help of the skeptics.
The skeptics have already been convinced. The only holdouts now are those ideologically committed to GW denial.
To say that the increases are the result of human industry is a narrow view of what is actually happening. Human industry is one component of several.
Right, but human industry is what's new, and it's the strongest factor of the current rise. If you'll examine the data, you'll see that the increase due to human industry is on top of the high point of a geologic-scale CO2 cycle.
We're pushing the CO2 levels higher than they usually go - higher than they've ever been in human evolutionary history. To assert otherwise, or to assert that won't have consequences, is to engage in denial.
However, none of those CO2 molecules carries a marker that says "I'm here because of human activity."
It's not clear to me, exactly, what you think is in dispute. The chemistry of burning a hydrocarbon molecule has been understood for 150 years. We know - know, for a fact - that CO2 gas is produced by the hydrocarbon-driven industries that are operational today and haven't been operational in the past.
To assert that we don't know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic is to assert that the gaseous products of human industry just... disappear... after production. How? By magic? It doesn't take anything more than a freshman chemistry class to understand how much CO2 is going to be produced by a given chemical reaction (such as burning it.) The amount of fossil fuels being burned at any one time isn't an unknown; it's something we're able to estimate at great accuracy.
I don't see what there is to be skeptical about. We know how much CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere and it's a simple matter of geometry to determine the total volume of the atmosphere. "Skeptics" who assert that we don't know that the increase in CO2 levels is anthropogenic are making two implicit assertions - that 1) man-made CO2 just disappears after production and 2) there's some other natural but unknown source of CO2 seamlessly taking its place - without providing evidence for any of them.
I quote the term "skeptic" because that reasoning bears no relationship to skepticism. Skeptics refrain from judgment until they have evidence that merits a conclusion. We have the evidence. What you're doing is denial.
There are meteorologists who say that any meteorologist who doubts global warming or that it is a result of human activity should have their license revoked.
I don't think there's anything unreasonable about questioning or even rescinding the credentials of those who fail to meet the scientific standards of the field. If we were talking about a neurologist who firmly believed that the brain was located near the spleen, and that the medical consensus to the contrary was based on flawed data, isn't it about time that guy's medical license came up for review?
The evidence for anthropogenic climate change, at this point, is as strong as the evidence that your brain is located in your skull and not in your abdomen. I wouldn't let a creationist teach biology, nor allow someone who thought the Earth was flat to draw our maps. Neither would I put much stock in the views of a meteorologist who was a GW denier.
It is a nice way to try to ad hominem me though, as though a mere mechanic would be too dumb to understand anything about science
Nobody called you "dumb." You've got a big chip on your shoulder about this issue, which is why you keep arguing these ad hominems instead of providing the data necessary to corroborate your assertions. Your lack of scientific objectivity is consistent with the GW denial movement, in my experience.
Or maybe I have more important things to do with my life than read endless report after endless report regarding a field I'm not an expert in nor intend to be an expert in.
Nobody's twisting your arm to get your opinion on these issues. If you really have better things to do that reply to me, go do them. But the fact that you continue to reply without doing any research or presenting any data is just further proof that GW denial isn't about drawing conclusions from evidence; it's about the ignorant discrediting sound science on the most specious grounds to avoid addressing the tough questions the reality of climate change brings up.
I will surrender to your supreme knowledge and I will fight the fight on your behalf.
I'm sorry, weren't you saying something about "religion"? Again you display your inability to be objective.
Peer review isn't the holy grail of anything, validity and verification of the data is.
What do you think the peers review? Your ignorance of the scientific process continues to mount. Where's the research, produced by GW deniers, that contains the valid, verified data that substantiates their conclusions?
A hypothesis is proposed and then tested. Once reproducible and tested, it becomes a theory. If a theory is proven true being nearly all doubt, it becomes a law.
LOL! No, you really don't have any idea how things work in the sciences, I see. I had wondered why so many creationists were engineers; apparently it's because they don't teach any science to engineers. Somebody ought to do something about that, I guess.
Seriously, though. Where did you get the hilarious idea that there was such a graduation of conjecture in the sciences? Have scientists even called something a "law" since the 18th century? I can't think of a one. Even Einstein's models, proven accurate in nearly every respect, are still called "theories." I wonder if you even think about these things before you post them.
I'll consider this exchange over until you produce the model which I've asked for nearly a half dozen times now since you are so astute in the science of AGW that you would instantly know where such a holy grail exists.
The only thing I can imagine more boring than doing someone else's homework is doing that homework for someone who, like you, has already told me they don't have the time or inclination to even read it. As adamant as you are that you don't ever bother to read scientific research - "endless reports" I believe you called them - it's very surprising that you think your demands for research are in the least bit credible.
The objectivity of research done by the self-righteous is always in question, regardless of the political or scientific bent.
Now you're back to the same wrong thing you were saying before, though. The self-righteous and the researchers aren't the same people. People point to Al Gore, for instance, as someone on a self-righteous crusade; but Al Gore isn't a researcher. He hasn't done any of the science on the subject and he's not responsible for any of the data (even if he is responsible for the internet). In general, the really strident "faces" of the GW issue aren't the ones producing data. The climatologists producing data are largely invisible. In fact I doubt you could name a single one.
Did I say I opposed the research? No, I said the self-righteous nature of those who advance that research gives others an excuse to question is efficacy.
Er, no, that's not what you said at all. But I'll let you move the goalposts this once.
Still, though, I don't see how you're making any sense. I do some research, let's say, on a cure for Parkinson's. My findings show that a certain molecule shows promise in treating Parkinson's.
Somebody who's just been diagnosed with Parkinson's reads my research in JAMA, and they're understandably excited! A disease that they were told is a debilitating death sentence just might not be.
What you're saying is, the fact that the guy with Parkinson's got excited and hopeful when he read my research is evidence that my research is wrong. How does that work? Who made the rule that the only kind of research that's valid is the research nobody's interested in?
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the milk contains trace amounts of BGH
Studies that indicate that haven't been successfully replicated. And BGH doesn't survive the human stomach; it's inactivated by stomach pH. BGH isn't anything that isn't naturally in cows already; they're just adding more of it.
And you can always go buy organic milk if you're paranoid. That really flies in the face of contention that consumers "don't have any choice", doesn't it?
If you say that its irrational for me to want to know what is in my food then you aren't worth talking to.
Genes are in your food already; they always have been. Bacillus thuringensis isn't anything you haven't already been exposed to, assuming you've ever been outside. I'm not saying that you shouldn't find out what's in your food, and indeed, I've never said that. But that's not what you're doing. You're letting anti-science vested interests lie to you about what's in your food.
Find out what's in your food, if you're interested. What you're doing right now is just making up paranoid stories.
Just another example of a horrible thing to do to the food supply and not tell anyone about it.
Do you have any evidence that it was "horrible?" Because there's no verifiable scientific difference between milk from BGH-treated cows and untreated cows.
Just another example of your irrational fear towards the agricultural developments that are required to feed a planet of 6.5 billion people. I guess it'd be better, in your world, if milk cost 10 dollars a gallon and millions of people starved to death (plus the ones that already do, of course.)
But gratz on ignoring all my other points. You really do keep your mind uncluttered of any inconvenient, contradictory facts, don't you?
They were not manipulating DNA the same way Monsanto does.
Genetic engineering is just like selective breeding, only you skip the part where you have to wait for random mutation to provide the sequences you want and insert them directly.
Genes are genes. It doesn't matter if the genes are from jellyfish, or bacillus thuringensis, or random mutation. DNA is DNA. That's why genetic engineering works. If you contend differently, you're saying that random mutation can never add new genes or new information - in which case I'm talking to a creationist, and who gives a damn what you think?
So did the people who invented asbestos believe it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Uh-huh. So, one guy was wrong once; therefore, everyone is always wrong? You're an idiot.
Try to figure out which milk has BGH in it, and which doesn't.
BGH isn't genetic engineering; you're an idiot. Genetic engineering could, in fact, obviate the need to dose cows with BHG, resulting in safer milk.
If you can even drink milk, thank a mutation - magnified in peoples of Indian, Northern European, etc. descent by a natural process of genetic engineering called "natural selection."
It's all the same. Genes are genes and it doesn't matter how they come about. There's no difference between inserting the Bt genes into corn and just waiting around for them to develop the same protein by random mutation; aside from the fact that the latter takes a million years or so longer than the former.
Right. 7000 years ago the native americans created it in laboratories under a microscope.
Their laboratories were their fields. Look, if you don't believe that corn didn't just evolve that way, but had to be reshaped by humans 7500 years ago, look it up. But I guess there really are people who don't know anything about their food except that it comes from the supermarket.
Obviously you know this for sure and I should trust that you aren't just arguing for the sake of arguing.
I do know it for sure. The Bt delta endotoxin is inactivated by the low pH in the stomachs of mammals. The reason it works on pest insect larva is because they have a basic gut pH.
It's really basic chemistry. Unless you're saying that there are humans out there walking around with NaOH instead of HCl in their stomachs, the Bt endotoxin is known to have no toxicity to humans.
Give people a choice, and nobody will buy this shit anymore.
They do have a choice; they've always had a choice. The farmers buy GM corn because it's cheaper to grow, the yields are greater, and it's much, much safer for the environment than repeated pesticide application.
Personally, I'd rather that we didn't poison our lakes and streams just to pander to your irrational fear and loathing of science and genetics. ZOMG! It's got GEEENES in it! OH NOES!
The point should be that genetic modification of our food isn't worth the risk.
Where do you think corn came from in the first place, genius? Do you think it just evolved to produce 2-3 ears of bright yellow corn just perfect for butter and salt?
Before corn was genetically engineered - by selective breeding by Meso-American farmers - you wouldn't have been able to distinguish corn from the crabgrass in your lawn. And it was just about as nutritious to eat.
They can't do that because we've got along just fine for what a hundred thousand years or so now without them.
Are you aware that we're feeding more than one billion people, currently, who would have starved to death if not for modern advances in agriculture techniques? Wikipedia "Norman Borlaug."
Doing it the old-fashioned way is no longer adequate to support the human population. It hasn't been for over 40 years. And every GM modification we put into foods - with absolutely no danger of mammalian toxicity - replaces the need to spray chemical pesticides, some of which in full concentration could kill every man, woman, and child on the Eastern Seaboard if you dropped a jug of it into the Catskill mountains reservoir.
And that's the pests that we can spray for. Subterranean root pests are extraordinarily hard to control chemically, because they're protected by the soil; but GM'ing harmless resistance factors into the roots is a very successful - and eco-friendly - strategy.
The science simply doesn't support a ban on GM foods. And really if we banned foods that had been subject to genetic tinkering there would be absolutely no crops left for you to eat. Every crop we grow has been genetically altered by human beings over the course of human agriculture. The legal concerns, on the other hand, are very troubling indeed, even to me, a relentless GM food booster.
I would imagine the makers of the GM crops would squash any further studies.
Well, I worked for the USDA Agricultural Research Service doing studies on GM crops, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that when Monsanto had complaints about us doing studies that would have undermined some of the claims of their products, we told them - with the full force of the law - that they could go fuck themselves. They're legally required to submit samples of their GM products to USDA testing if they want EPA approval to go to market, so they didn't have any power to undermine our research agenda.
Anyway, the point was that if bad side effects of the GM crops came up, and there were very few normal crops left due to cross pollination, we would be shit out of luck and a lot of people might starve.
A massive crop failure would be a big deal, sure; but it would just be a matter of pulling some seeds out of one of the national USDA germplasm repositories and basically "rebooting" the corn crop from a "backup" the next season. Again, an untrivial task, but at least we're not talking about the accidental extinction of Zea mays mays or something.
Not to mention it's been shown in some studies that GM crops have nasty side effects like having pollen that kills butterflies.
It's been one study, actually; and the results were never replicated.
It's really impossible for them to do so, actually, since the pollen of a Bt crop doesn't express the Bt protein that would be lethal to lepidopterans.
Wow. I think it's staggering that the burden of proving permission for access to technology is far, far greater than for access to a woman's vagina.
Maybe that's a defense strategy, though. "C'mon, your Honor! Just sitting at the coffeehouse, broadcasting its SSID all over the place like that? Did you see how it was dressed? It was asking for it!"
Unless you can demonstrate how your purchase of that vehicle is going to reduce the federal government's cost of doing business by the amount of your tax credit, you're just asking everyone else in the country to write you a rebate check out of their own income.
You fail accounting. Reducing your tax liability is reducing costs, and it's not a "rebate check from everybody else" for two reasons:
1) The government's expenditures are not limited to tax revenue.
2) We wouldn't describe me using a coupon to reduce my cable bill "getting a rebate check from the CEO of Time Warner."
Other people's taxes don't go up because you buy a Prius, because government tax rates are determined by legislature, not by government expenditure.
We wasn't stopping anyone from doing anything, he wasn't oppressing anyone, he was saying something many people don't agree with, and how people handle that is the real test of the constitution
Let's put you to the test - the test of actually knowing what the Constitution says.
Point to the part of the US Constitution that guarantees your right to be a nationally-syndicated talk show host. Oh, you don't see it in there?
Imus can say whatever the hell he likes. The US constitution doesn't immunize him from the consequences of his speech - like, for instance, people deciding that they don't want to buy the products that advertise during his show. Like, for instance, NBC and CBS deciding that they don't want to pay his syndicate to broadcast his program.
Free speech doesn't mean everybody else has to STFU. Free speech just means that the government can't lock your ass up for disagreeing with it. Free speech means you don't have to shut your mouth; it doesn't mean other people are prevented from shutting their ears.
She didn't, dickweed. It was the poster of the death threat.
I guess you didn't get the Man Memo. Whenever something bad happens to a woman, it's her fault, particularly if she complains about it.
I don't know how you missed that. I mean that's how we've been treating rape victims, like, forever.
While the comments posted against Kathy Sierra are despicable, I really feel that they are quite empty threats by a lonely, angry, frustrated, and upset individual.
Yeah, I mean it's not like any of these crazy people have ever become so obsessed with somebody they saw on the internet that they tracked them down and killed them, right?
Oh, wait. What a world of naivete you must live in where no man has committed a violent act against a strange woman for no reason.
Evolution doesn't quite cover the very first proteins assembling, however, it applies 100% from that point on.
That's exactly what I said. You replied in such a way that it seemed like you were implying that evolution does cover the formation of the universe and the origins of life; that's why you were asked where you got such crazy ideas. Creationists are the ones who typically suggest that evolution is the explanation for everything.
I'd suggest you be a little more careful.
Well, except for the fact that here you're saying "ignorant" whereas before you said "gibbering idiot,"
Parent used them as synonyms; I'm just continuing the same usage for clarity. For my own word choice, I would stick with "ignorant."
And the ignorant shouldn't complain about being recognized as ignorant. They should correct their ignorance.
Maybe you would say that my insistence on at least a modicum of respect for the humanity (if not the correctness) of huge groups of people is still reflective of some sort of ignorance.
I doubt it, but honestly, I'm not sure what would prompt someone to excercise such intense righteous indignation on behalf of someone else. I suspect you're simply addicted to being righteously indignant.
This questionable display of reading comprehension
Yeah, about your reading comprehension... maybe you noticed that I was just using a term the parent used first?
Man, some people. I thought my point was pretty clear that it's fairly ridiculous to call foul on calling someone ignorant just because they have a different view, when it's obvious that they themselves only hold that view out of ignorance. In other words you shouldn't try to refute accusations that you yourself prove true.
But... neither is society going to hell in a handbasket because not enough people believe in evolution. It's okay if your auto mechanic believes something different from you. Your software isn't any better or worse because an evolutionist|creationist wrote it.
No. But it is the case that my car isn't going to get repaired by a mechanic who believes that the engine is just a hampster on a wheel; and my software isn't going to compile when it's written by the guy who thinks it's possible to write a general halting program. And it's really gonna be a cold day in hell before I allow a doctor near me who rejects the biological origin of the human body.
I don't buy maps from people who believe in a flat Earth, either. These aren't just wacky beliefs we're talking about; we're talking about a lot of people who are basing their professional conclusions on things that just aren't true.
I don't believe in Evolution. I haven't seen enough facts to support it. I hold the same to be true for all mechanisms whereby the earth, life, and the universe were created.
Wow. I love when people talk about how arrogant it is to accuse people of being gibbering idiots, and then go on to prove what gibbering idiots they are? Arrogant? Seems more like prescient.
Evolution isn't an explanation for the origin of the universe. It's not really an explanation for the origin of life, either. It's the scientific model that explains the history and diversity of life on Earth by means of mechanisms like random mutation and natural selection.
And to the extent that a scientific model can be proven, evolution has been proven. Life on Earth evolved and continues to evolve (we know that from the fossil record and from continuing observations.) The theory of evolution tells us how that evolution happened. If you haven't "seen the evidence", then it's because you've never been in a biology classroom, or because you don't even understand what you're looking for evidence of.
How can you be so sure?
Who has to be sure? You need to accept uncertainty into your life. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. There are questions in biology that evolution doesn't yet answer. Thank goodness, there's a lot of biologists who would be out of work, otherwise.
Your attitude about the skeptics is "well, tough."
My attitude towards skeptics is "here's the evidence." If that's not enough to convince them, or they refuse to even look at it (like somebody else I'm debating in this thread) then it's obvious that I'm not dealing with a skeptic at all, but somebody who's already made up their mind and won't ever change it.
Truth is truth, but how you deliver the truth has a lot to do with how many buy into it.
Granted, and there's a lot of people who are misinformed about the science, but that has a lot more to do with things like:
1) the campaign of misinformation promulgated by energy industries to obscure the science;
2) conspiracy theories by right-wing entertainment figures;
3) a credulous media that cleaves to false balance by giving GW deniers the same emphasis as consensus science
than it has anything to do with the enthusiasm of climatologists and other interested parties. People don't ignore the issue because they see someone raising an alarm and then say to themselves "hrm, the fact that this guy is raising the alarm means I can ignore him"; they're ignoring the issue because of a massive campaign of misinformation enabled by a lazy and complacent media. A perfect example of this is the article at the top of this thread.
Those who are skeptical of the neutrality of the research have been given a reason to doubt.
A false reason, as I've spent several messages proving to you.
It would be better for those that want something done to not sound alarmist.
If there's no reason for alarm, why do anything? Sometimes there's a good reason for alarm, and if the realistic likelyhood is a 20-ft rise in ocean levels by 2100 that inundates hundreds of densly-populated cities worldwide, how do you relay that information without sounding "alarmist"?
Sure, we need to do something, but it's not going to happen without the help of the skeptics.
The skeptics have already been convinced. The only holdouts now are those ideologically committed to GW denial.
To say that the increases are the result of human industry is a narrow view of what is actually happening. Human industry is one component of several.
Right, but human industry is what's new, and it's the strongest factor of the current rise. If you'll examine the data, you'll see that the increase due to human industry is on top of the high point of a geologic-scale CO2 cycle.
We're pushing the CO2 levels higher than they usually go - higher than they've ever been in human evolutionary history. To assert otherwise, or to assert that won't have consequences, is to engage in denial.
However, none of those CO2 molecules carries a marker that says "I'm here because of human activity."
It's not clear to me, exactly, what you think is in dispute. The chemistry of burning a hydrocarbon molecule has been understood for 150 years. We know - know, for a fact - that CO2 gas is produced by the hydrocarbon-driven industries that are operational today and haven't been operational in the past.
To assert that we don't know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic is to assert that the gaseous products of human industry just... disappear... after production. How? By magic? It doesn't take anything more than a freshman chemistry class to understand how much CO2 is going to be produced by a given chemical reaction (such as burning it.) The amount of fossil fuels being burned at any one time isn't an unknown; it's something we're able to estimate at great accuracy.
I don't see what there is to be skeptical about. We know how much CO2 we're dumping into the atmosphere and it's a simple matter of geometry to determine the total volume of the atmosphere. "Skeptics" who assert that we don't know that the increase in CO2 levels is anthropogenic are making two implicit assertions - that 1) man-made CO2 just disappears after production and 2) there's some other natural but unknown source of CO2 seamlessly taking its place - without providing evidence for any of them.
I quote the term "skeptic" because that reasoning bears no relationship to skepticism. Skeptics refrain from judgment until they have evidence that merits a conclusion. We have the evidence. What you're doing is denial.
There are meteorologists who say that any meteorologist who doubts global warming or that it is a result of human activity should have their license revoked.
I don't think there's anything unreasonable about questioning or even rescinding the credentials of those who fail to meet the scientific standards of the field. If we were talking about a neurologist who firmly believed that the brain was located near the spleen, and that the medical consensus to the contrary was based on flawed data, isn't it about time that guy's medical license came up for review?
The evidence for anthropogenic climate change, at this point, is as strong as the evidence that your brain is located in your skull and not in your abdomen. I wouldn't let a creationist teach biology, nor allow someone who thought the Earth was flat to draw our maps. Neither would I put much stock in the views of a meteorologist who was a GW denier.
It is a nice way to try to ad hominem me though, as though a mere mechanic would be too dumb to understand anything about science
Nobody called you "dumb." You've got a big chip on your shoulder about this issue, which is why you keep arguing these ad hominems instead of providing the data necessary to corroborate your assertions. Your lack of scientific objectivity is consistent with the GW denial movement, in my experience.
Or maybe I have more important things to do with my life than read endless report after endless report regarding a field I'm not an expert in nor intend to be an expert in.
Nobody's twisting your arm to get your opinion on these issues. If you really have better things to do that reply to me, go do them. But the fact that you continue to reply without doing any research or presenting any data is just further proof that GW denial isn't about drawing conclusions from evidence; it's about the ignorant discrediting sound science on the most specious grounds to avoid addressing the tough questions the reality of climate change brings up.
I will surrender to your supreme knowledge and I will fight the fight on your behalf.
I'm sorry, weren't you saying something about "religion"? Again you display your inability to be objective.
Peer review isn't the holy grail of anything, validity and verification of the data is.
What do you think the peers review? Your ignorance of the scientific process continues to mount. Where's the research, produced by GW deniers, that contains the valid, verified data that substantiates their conclusions?
A hypothesis is proposed and then tested. Once reproducible and tested, it becomes a theory. If a theory is proven true being nearly all doubt, it becomes a law.
LOL! No, you really don't have any idea how things work in the sciences, I see. I had wondered why so many creationists were engineers; apparently it's because they don't teach any science to engineers. Somebody ought to do something about that, I guess.
Seriously, though. Where did you get the hilarious idea that there was such a graduation of conjecture in the sciences? Have scientists even called something a "law" since the 18th century? I can't think of a one. Even Einstein's models, proven accurate in nearly every respect, are still called "theories." I wonder if you even think about these things before you post them.
I'll consider this exchange over until you produce the model which I've asked for nearly a half dozen times now since you are so astute in the science of AGW that you would instantly know where such a holy grail exists.
The only thing I can imagine more boring than doing someone else's homework is doing that homework for someone who, like you, has already told me they don't have the time or inclination to even read it. As adamant as you are that you don't ever bother to read scientific research - "endless reports" I believe you called them - it's very surprising that you think your demands for research are in the least bit credible.
The objectivity of research done by the self-righteous is always in question, regardless of the political or scientific bent.
Now you're back to the same wrong thing you were saying before, though. The self-righteous and the researchers aren't the same people. People point to Al Gore, for instance, as someone on a self-righteous crusade; but Al Gore isn't a researcher. He hasn't done any of the science on the subject and he's not responsible for any of the data (even if he is responsible for the internet). In general, the really strident "faces" of the GW issue aren't the ones producing data. The climatologists producing data are largely invisible. In fact I doubt you could name a single one.
Did I say I opposed the research? No, I said the self-righteous nature of those who advance that research gives others an excuse to question is efficacy.
Er, no, that's not what you said at all. But I'll let you move the goalposts this once.
Still, though, I don't see how you're making any sense. I do some research, let's say, on a cure for Parkinson's. My findings show that a certain molecule shows promise in treating Parkinson's.
Somebody who's just been diagnosed with Parkinson's reads my research in JAMA, and they're understandably excited! A disease that they were told is a debilitating death sentence just might not be.
What you're saying is, the fact that the guy with Parkinson's got excited and hopeful when he read my research is evidence that my research is wrong. How does that work? Who made the rule that the only kind of research that's valid is the research nobody's interested in?