MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right?
People who stay in abusive relationships all sound exactly alike..
Disclaimer: by now it's pretty obvious nobody is reading but us, and we're just using/. as e-mail, so why don't we just stop grandstanding? You raise some good points, but I find the name-calling rather childish. On my part, I'm neither trolling nor flaming, just trying to make sense of your posts.
Why it's so diffilcult for a couple of Slashdotters to understand, I have no idea.
Asperger's? Sorry, cheap shot, I couldn't resist.
Let's put it this way:
Maybe you're not so good at explaining yourself as you think you are?
Remember your neighbouhood's dogs? They organize themselves, have rules and collaborate in many, many ways. The fact that you choose only negative characteristics as examples shoud have been a dead giveaway, but...
So lets cut to the chase:
What do we agree on? Correct me if I misstate your position.
Humans and animals are always trying to adapt to the environment, survive and breed, with more or less success.
In order to do that we have developed or evolved strategies, conducts etc.
Said strategies can be hard-wired (an ant or a bee), or mostly cultural (us).
And here's the first difference: if I undestand you well, you seem to think that our conduct being mostly cultural makes us fundamentally different. I think that is just a matter of degree. A crocodrile doesn't even know its parents, doesn't belong to a group and is a little perfect killing machine right from the egg. Higher mamifers, on the other side cannot survive alone, and have to be taught to hunt and fight. They are evolving cultural traits, just very slowly (to our time frame, at least). We are at the extreme of the scale: our cultural baggage develops so fast that other species don't have time to adapt, and we can wipe them out. But this doesn't really make us qualitatively different. We have just developed our version of a stronger jaw, or a longer tusk.
Why do we evolve so fast? at this point we agree again: we have developed language.
And here the ride gets interesting. Armed with language, we are the monkeys from hell. Calculating, scheming, but with the instincts and morality of monkeys . And, just in case you have any illusions about them, monkeys are nasty bastards. Almost like us, but not quite.
So now we're top of the hill, kings of Creation? Not so lucky. Because what language really did was organize us at an upper level. An emergent phenomenom, to be fashionable. And now the higher life form in Earth is not us, men, but societies, which are composed of us, but are different from us, and don't really care about us as individuals. We, as individuals, are the past, and don't matter anymore. Societies have a different logic, but they are evolving, like everything that is alive. They fight, they feed, they mate, they die. Very amoeba-like, really. Just in a different time-frame from ours.
How it will end? I don't have the slightest idea.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
P.S.: I suggest we let the Slashdot thread rest. If you want to have the last word, feel free to mail me to carloscesarAToperamailDOTcom
So many words to say so little... And nastiness! Easily annoyed, aren't we?
but when you get down to it, they are very simple beasts.
Aren't we all? The point is not that dogs are almost human, but rather that we humans are not so different from dogs. You seem to have idealized notions of human relationships, motivations, society, etc. May I suggest that that's the way some of us would like to be, not how really are? Chasing, fighting, marking territory, and humping one another are a pretty good description of most human's activities. Lucky you that move in higher circles.
As an aside, I don't understand your fixation with programs, but animals certainly can make plans and develop complex collective strategies. You seem to imply that since they didn't develop them the same way we do with ours, their's don't count. If you ever have the bad luck of being chased by a pack of wolves, or pride of lions, try blinding them with logic.
I guess I would have obtained a better answer from your dog. Bring him to the keyboard, please.;>)
Cheers,
P.S.: Somewhat puzzled by the ad-hominem pettiness, I went to see your site. You look like a fairly OK guy, even if a little too narrowly focused, but when you get the job you're looking for you'll be a lot safer keeping in mind your neighbourhood's dogs. They know a thing or two about life that you apparently don't.
I'm not the guy you were debating, but I'd like to add some comments:
I explained predators playing with their prey in a cousin post, so I won't go over it again here.
No, you didn't. You're stuck in a circular reasoning, but apparently unaware of it.
This is just opinion, and we clearly differ, but my opinion is that to attach cruelty to these actions is to anthropomorphize creatures that are too simple to feel malice, but also too simple to feel compassion (as in, a quick and easy death for their prey).
No, they aren't. Ask anybody who works with animals if they have or not temperaments, personalities, moods, likes, dislikes, friends, enemies, the works. Or just spend some time looking at your neighbourhood's dogs relationships and see how simple they are.
Animals play with one another (puppies or kittens), so why wouldn't they play with their prey? I believe it is training and exercise in both cases.
Aren't you idealizing them?
You see, animals are nothing if not complex. They go from the placid and stupid (cows and sheep, to keep the examples mamifers) to real nasty bastards like chimpanzees, with group killings, wars, cannibalism, just like us.
What animals lack is language, not emotions or personalities, so they're not telling us. You have to go and see for yourself.
I wonder how many people complaining about the speed of OpenOffice (on Linux) have attempted to prelink it first? Some claim it can increase the speed by 50%.
Why, oh why?
Puzzled by so many posts about OO speed I tried it right now:
OOWriter 2.0 from clicking icon to page open with cursor blinking, 7 seconds. In a very middle of the road machine: Atlon XP 2400, 768 RAM.
Why would anybody need an even faster start? What practical difference would it make?
OOs slowness is some kind of urban legend, kept alive by MSFT astroturfers.
I'm glad we seem to be in agreement, but I think you should refute what I really said, not what you deducted. Strictly speaking, climate is inherently unpredictable beyond next nanosecond. Obviously, the odds of a phase shift ocurring tonight are very, very, very small. That was what I meant by the "few days" timeframe. The odds increase very fast with time, and given enough they become almost a certainity. And is "almost" because it is remotely possible that the system has reached a definitive equilibrium, and will stay just like now until the end of time, or the release of Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first.
By now we're just splitting hairs, so let's the matter rest.
First and foremost, thanks for keeping the thread polite. Unusual here.
Now to your post:
Your coin tossing analogy is about as valid as all analogies, as it assumes there's no upside, no middle ground, and assumes the downside is the worst outcome possible.
This is a favourite peeve of mine. Apparently, a lot of people here suffers from the Ian Malcom Wannabe Syndrome (tm), namely, running in circles shouting "Life will find a way", "The Earth is a massive lump of rock that will survive anything, and doesn't care about us" or "Life will survive, somewhere, somehow". Well, Duh! Talk about the obvious. I guess nobody cares about Earth or Life. Even our species will survive almost aything. The species is hardy. But our civilization isn't, and I think people fail to grasp how we live from year to year, cropwise. Civilization could perhaps survive a year of bad crops, certainly not two. Two years would mean certain famine, food wars and genocide. Ten years would wipe most people out. Think Mad Max future. And a ten year climatic upheaval is an insignificant event in a planetary scale. Hardly a hiccup. System Earth makes a phase shift, finds a new equilibrium, and continues its merry way, no sweat. But by then, we're toast. Back to square one. Imagine a climate disruption that aridifies the three bredbaskets of the world, the Midwest, the Argentine pampas, and the Ukraine region for just ten years, before settling down again. Not nice.
We are, for example, a bit overdue for another ice age. Could it be that "global warming" has affected that outcome, to our benefit?
A couple of decades ago, scientists were talking about "global cooling", and discussing spreading tons of soot over the ice caps to increase heat retention. Guess they were mistaken about that too.
Well that was precisely my point. If you remember, I naïvely entered this thread trying to explain that global climate was a dynamic complex system, described with chaos theory, and was inherently unpredictable. How the discussion got this far I cannot imagine.
Your post raises some valid points, but I fail to see the basic argument. My fault, I'm sure.The two paragraphs seem to have been written by two different persons.
So, excuse me if I answer discrete bits.
This is nothing more than alarmist extremism.
If you say so...
You've made the erroneous claim that nearly every road into the future leads to disaster, and only a miracle would save the day
Where?
unless, what? We follow your prescription plan for avoiding that disaster?
Again, where? If I have a Prescription Plan (tm) it's news for me. Maybe you'd be so kind as to explain to me this plan I'm supposed to have, but I'm unaware of. By now, I'm beginning to feel like Moliere's bourgeois.
Has it occurred to you that not only do we not have a clue what is going to happen, or why, or how much humans may or may not be responsible for it, but we also don't know if climate change is reversible in any way, shape or form? That any action at all we can take will have any effect whatsoever, or any positive effect? That it's equally likely that any action we take will have no measurable influence on climate change, or could even make things worse?
Well, it has not only ocurred to me, but I was under the impression that was precisely MY point. This is getting surreal. Is really my post the one you're answering to?
Max, I could go on and on, but what's the point. I have the distinct feeling you're having this argument with yourself, inside your head, and for some reason decided to identify one of your sides with my name. I guess I pressed some hot button of yours, or something.
A suggestion: print your post, delete all adjectives, qualifiers and put-downs, and see it does make sense.
Hola Guignol! Woldn't you be the Grand Guignol, perhaps?
Yes, you're right, maybe an excess of flippancy from my part, but this sphere reasoning would only apply to some random solid sphere, standing still in the void, and I thought we were talking about good ole Earth's climate. And then we'd still have to define usable (usable for what?) land, and that is another viper's nest.
So for those eager to tackle the Earth part, I have a career path to suggest:
1) Grok atmosphere, landmass and seas.
2) Add various Earth movements.
3) Add Sun's energy.
4) Solve the system, as to accurately predict future states. Using primary school mathematics gives extra points, but use of cutting-edge maths and supercomputers is allowed.
5) Go fetch your Nobel.
6) PROFIT !!!
BTW, you have good people skills. Congratulations.
You are making the common mistake of equating climate to weather.
Example: (Climate)-I predict the climate of Florida will still be tropical on 25/7/2010. (Weather)-I predict a hurricane will hit Miami on 25/7/2010.
No, I'm not. I was talking about climate.
Your example: You have good odds in your prediction for Miami climate in 2010, but were we both immortal, I'd bet that Miami doesn't even exist in 2100. Or underwater, or levelled by massive hurricanes, or both. Because five years is an awful small time speaking about climate, and an awful long time trying to predict weather.
I guess I've been trolled. If so, good one, congratulations. But just in case you're serious:
All apologies to the "butterfly effect",
Apologies accepted (the Butterfly Effect)
but small changes tend to be absorbed or subsumed by the existing system dynamics.
The operative word being "tend".
My driving my car to work tomorrow, or not, is a small change. But my doing so, or not, will have no appreciable effect on climate.
Here you're almost certainly right (notice the "almost")
EVERYONE not driving at all tomorrow may have localized effects... but again, in all probability, will have no significant effect when measured on a planetary scale.
Now we're down the slippery slope... You being right or not depends on your definition of "everyone", "at all" and "tomorrow". If you meant "most people will carpool to work next Friday", you'd be probably right (notice how we went from "almost certainly" to "probably"). On the other side, if you meant "nobody is going to use an oil powered vehicle from tomorrow on", you were almost certainly wrong. It indeed would "have a significant effect when measured on a planetary scale".
A half a degree mean increase in temp may cause a major change, or again, be nothing more than a half a degree increase...
And that's the crux of the problem: your comment is both right and irrelevant. Because what you're saying is essentially "unpredictable systems are,well, unpredictable, so let's not worry". Let's use an example: a guy is forced to toss a coin, heads nothing happens, tails they cut one finger off. He could have a good streak, but eventually his piano playing is going to suffer. And our chances are much, much worse: head or tails we lose fingers, if the coin lands on the edge and stays up we're safe. Really. I, for one, don't like these odds. Maybe you're braver.
how can you claim that even a small change of mean temperature is [statement of fact] going to cause massive disruptions? Well, half a degree may be a small change in terms of choosing a jacket, but as energy kept in the global system is a rather big deal. And as part of a feedbacksystem, like: less Artic ice, reduced albedo, more Sun energy absorbed by the sea, hotter air over the sea, and then even less ice, is scary.
In fact, is even possible that these disruptions cancel themselves out somehow, and the system remains in phase space, but it doesn't look like a smart bet.
Slashdot Mirror
Great post!
Wish I had modpoints.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Communism is a top down approach to control where a central authority dictates what everyone does.
You flunked Political Science 101, didn't you?
Cheers,
Remember the UN the people who have meet a bribe they don't like
And they are different from your politicians exactly how?
Apparently you read neither your own newspapers nor your own History books.
Cheers,
Any tax system that would break that would break the fundamental laws of the universe.
No offense intended, but you know the fundamental laws of the universe, and spend your time posting in Slashdot?
Cheers,
MS isn't inherenty bad. They have just made more mistakes than others, but that can change. Did you ever stop to think that they might just want to do something right?
People who stay in abusive relationships all sound exactly alike..
Perfect! Just one killer line... +1, Insightful.
An addition to my friends list.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Disclaimer: by now it's pretty obvious nobody is reading but us, and we're just using /. as e-mail, so why don't we just stop grandstanding?
You raise some good points, but I find the name-calling rather childish.
On my part, I'm neither trolling nor flaming, just trying to make sense of your posts.
Why it's so diffilcult for a couple of
Slashdotters to understand, I have no idea.
Asperger's? Sorry, cheap shot, I couldn't resist.
Let's put it this way:
Maybe you're not so good at explaining yourself as you think you are?
Remember your neighbouhood's dogs? They organize themselves, have rules and collaborate in many, many ways. The fact that you choose only negative characteristics as examples shoud have been a dead giveaway, but...
So lets cut to the chase:
What do we agree on? Correct me if I misstate your position.
Humans and animals are always trying to adapt to the environment, survive and breed, with more or less success.
In order to do that we have developed or evolved strategies, conducts etc.
Said strategies can be hard-wired (an ant or a bee), or mostly cultural (us).
And here's the first difference: if I undestand you well, you seem to think that our conduct being mostly cultural makes us fundamentally different. I think that is just a matter of degree.
A crocodrile doesn't even know its parents, doesn't belong to a group and is a little perfect killing machine right from the egg. Higher mamifers, on the other side cannot survive alone, and have to be taught to hunt and fight. They are evolving cultural traits, just very slowly (to our time frame, at least).
We are at the extreme of the scale: our cultural baggage develops so fast that other species don't have time to adapt, and we can wipe them out. But this doesn't really make us qualitatively different. We have just developed our version of a stronger jaw, or a longer tusk.
Why do we evolve so fast? at this point we agree again: we have developed language.
And here the ride gets interesting. Armed with language, we are the monkeys from hell. Calculating, scheming, but with the instincts and morality of monkeys . And, just in case you have any illusions about them, monkeys are nasty bastards. Almost like us, but not quite.
So now we're top of the hill, kings of Creation? Not so lucky.
Because what language really did was organize us at an upper level. An emergent phenomenom, to be fashionable. And now the higher life form in Earth is not us, men, but societies, which are composed of us, but are different from us, and don't really care about us as individuals. We, as individuals, are the past, and don't matter anymore.
Societies have a different logic, but they are evolving, like everything that is alive. They fight, they feed, they mate, they die. Very amoeba-like, really. Just in a different time-frame from ours.
How it will end? I don't have the slightest idea.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
P.S.: I suggest we let the Slashdot thread rest. If you want to have the last word, feel free to mail me to carloscesarAToperamailDOTcom
Best wishes,
CC
So many words to say so little... And nastiness! Easily annoyed, aren't we?
;>)
but when you get down to it, they are very simple beasts.
Aren't we all?
The point is not that dogs are almost human, but rather that we humans are not so different from dogs.
You seem to have idealized notions of human relationships, motivations, society, etc.
May I suggest that that's the way some of us would like to be, not how really are?
Chasing, fighting, marking territory, and humping one another are a pretty good description of most human's activities. Lucky you that move in higher circles.
As an aside, I don't understand your fixation with programs, but animals certainly can make plans and develop complex collective strategies.
You seem to imply that since they didn't develop them the same way we do with ours, their's don't count. If you ever have the bad luck of being chased by a pack of wolves, or pride of lions, try blinding them with logic.
I guess I would have obtained a better answer from your dog. Bring him to the keyboard, please.
Cheers,
P.S.: Somewhat puzzled by the ad-hominem pettiness, I went to see your site. You look like a fairly OK guy, even if a little too narrowly focused, but when you get the job you're looking for you'll be a lot safer keeping in mind your neighbourhood's dogs. They know a thing or two about life that you apparently don't.
Best wishes,
CC
I'm not the guy you were debating, but I'd like to add some comments:
I explained predators playing with their prey in a cousin post, so I won't go over it again here.
No, you didn't. You're stuck in a circular reasoning, but apparently unaware of it.
This is just opinion, and we clearly differ, but my opinion is that to attach cruelty to these actions is to anthropomorphize creatures that are too simple to feel malice, but also too simple to feel compassion (as in, a quick and easy death for their prey).
No, they aren't. Ask anybody who works with animals if they have or not temperaments, personalities, moods, likes, dislikes, friends, enemies, the works.
Or just spend some time looking at your neighbourhood's dogs relationships and see how simple they are.
Animals play with one another (puppies or kittens), so why wouldn't they play with their prey? I believe it is training and exercise in both cases.
Aren't you idealizing them?
You see, animals are nothing if not complex. They go from the placid and stupid (cows and sheep, to keep the examples mamifers) to real nasty bastards like chimpanzees, with group killings, wars, cannibalism, just like us.
What animals lack is language, not emotions or personalities, so they're not telling us. You have to go and see for yourself.
Cheers,
I haven't used 2.0 yet. Did they go full KDE?
At least in Mandriva 2006, it looks so.
OO 2.0 is much, much better than 1.1.5, do yourself a favor and try it.
Cheers,
Not only is it bloated, but it uses some homegrown toolkit for the GUI.
Right now I'm having OO Writer 2.0 and KWord 1.4 open side to side and they have the exact same icons and widgets.
I guess is a trick of the light.
Cheers,
I wonder how many people complaining about the speed of OpenOffice (on Linux) have attempted to prelink it first? Some claim it can increase the speed by 50%.
Why, oh why?
Puzzled by so many posts about OO speed I tried it right now:
OOWriter 2.0 from clicking icon to page open with cursor blinking, 7 seconds.
In a very middle of the road machine: Atlon XP 2400, 768 RAM.
Why would anybody need an even faster start?
What practical difference would it make?
OOs slowness is some kind of urban legend, kept alive by MSFT astroturfers.
Cheers,
Beisdes that, since they were nerds, what other type of intercourse could they get?
Oh, to the contrary, Einstein was quite the ladyman:
And Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood (heiress to the pottery fortune), freeing him from having to work a single day on his life.
Not bad for a nerd, either.
Cheers,
Strictly speaking, the universe is inherently unpredictable beyond a quantum time tick. Hasn't been a problem so far. :)
;>)
Tell it to the dinosaurs.
Yes, I think this is exactly why. Other big vendors - IBM, HP, Sun - they all have Opteron/Athlon machines in their line-ups.
And now, with Fujitsu announcing their Opteron line, its everybody except one.
Balmer, Fiona, or Gates were neither charismatic n
Wos Fiona?
is anyone else thinking wallpaper here ???
No, what we're thinking is really cheap e-books reader.
Bye, bye, publishing industry. Hello portable library!
Cheers,
I'm glad we seem to be in agreement, but I think you should refute what I really said, not what you deducted.
Strictly speaking, climate is inherently unpredictable beyond next nanosecond.
Obviously, the odds of a phase shift ocurring tonight are very, very, very small.
That was what I meant by the "few days" timeframe.
The odds increase very fast with time, and given enough they become almost a certainity. And is "almost" because it is remotely possible that the system has reached a definitive equilibrium, and will stay just like now until the end of time, or the release of Duke Nukem Forever, whichever comes first.
By now we're just splitting hairs, so let's the matter rest.
Cheers,
First and foremost, thanks for keeping the thread polite. Unusual here.
Now to your post:
Your coin tossing analogy is about as valid as all analogies, as it assumes there's no upside, no middle ground, and assumes the downside is the worst outcome possible.
This is a favourite peeve of mine. Apparently, a lot of people here suffers from the Ian Malcom Wannabe Syndrome (tm), namely, running in circles shouting "Life will find a way", "The Earth is a massive lump of rock that will survive anything, and doesn't care about us" or "Life will survive, somewhere, somehow".
Well, Duh! Talk about the obvious. I guess nobody cares about Earth or Life. Even our species will survive almost aything. The species is hardy.
But our civilization isn't, and I think people fail to grasp how we live from year to year, cropwise.
Civilization could perhaps survive a year of bad crops, certainly not two. Two years would mean certain famine, food wars and genocide.
Ten years would wipe most people out. Think Mad Max future.
And a ten year climatic upheaval is an insignificant event in a planetary scale. Hardly a hiccup. System Earth makes a phase shift, finds a new equilibrium, and continues its merry way, no sweat.
But by then, we're toast. Back to square one.
Imagine a climate disruption that aridifies the three bredbaskets of the world, the Midwest, the Argentine pampas, and the Ukraine region for just ten years, before settling down again. Not nice.
We are, for example, a bit overdue for another ice age. Could it be that "global warming" has affected that outcome, to our benefit?
A couple of decades ago, scientists were talking about "global cooling", and discussing spreading tons of soot over the ice caps to increase heat retention. Guess they were mistaken about that too.
Well that was precisely my point. If you remember, I naïvely entered this thread trying to explain that global climate was a dynamic complex system, described with chaos theory, and was inherently unpredictable.
How the discussion got this far I cannot imagine.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
Bastard! You stole the post I was about make!
Do you read minds or something?
(Puts TFH on)
I'm out of mod points, so please accapt my virtual +1, Insightful.
Cheers,
Your post raises some valid points, but I fail to see the basic argument. My fault, I'm sure.The two paragraphs seem to have been written by two different persons.
So, excuse me if I answer discrete bits.
This is nothing more than alarmist extremism.
If you say so...
You've made the erroneous claim that nearly every road into the future leads to disaster, and only a miracle would save the day
Where?
unless, what? We follow your prescription plan for avoiding that disaster?
Again, where? If I have a Prescription Plan (tm) it's news for me. Maybe you'd be so kind as to explain to me this plan I'm supposed to have, but I'm unaware of. By now, I'm beginning to feel like Moliere's bourgeois.
Has it occurred to you that not only do we not have a clue what is going to happen, or why, or how much humans may or may not be responsible for it, but we also don't know if climate change is reversible in any way, shape or form? That any action at all we can take will have any effect whatsoever, or any positive effect? That it's equally likely that any action we take will have no measurable influence on climate change, or could even make things worse?
Well, it has not only ocurred to me, but I was under the impression that was precisely MY point. This is getting surreal. Is really my post the one you're answering to?
Max, I could go on and on, but what's the point.
I have the distinct feeling you're having this argument with yourself, inside your head, and for some reason decided to identify one of your sides with my name.
I guess I pressed some hot button of yours, or something.
A suggestion: print your post, delete all adjectives, qualifiers and put-downs, and see it does make sense.
Cheers,
Hola Guignol! Woldn't you be the Grand Guignol, perhaps?
Yes, you're right, maybe an excess of flippancy from my part, but this sphere reasoning would only apply to some random solid sphere, standing still in the void, and I thought we were talking about good ole Earth's climate. And then we'd still have to define usable (usable for what?) land, and that is another viper's nest.
So for those eager to tackle the Earth part, I have a career path to suggest:
1) Grok atmosphere, landmass and seas.
2) Add various Earth movements.
3) Add Sun's energy.
4) Solve the system, as to accurately predict future states. Using primary school mathematics gives extra points, but use of cutting-edge maths and supercomputers is allowed.
5) Go fetch your Nobel.
6) PROFIT !!!
BTW, you have good people skills. Congratulations.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
No-one who doesn't understand primary school maths, no.
Simon, dynamic complex systems are way, way beyond the realm of primary school maths.
Go learn something and then return.
Google is your friend.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
You are making the common mistake of equating climate to weather.
Example:
(Climate)-I predict the climate of Florida will still be tropical on 25/7/2010.
(Weather)-I predict a hurricane will hit Miami on 25/7/2010.
No, I'm not. I was talking about climate.
Your example: You have good odds in your prediction for Miami climate in 2010, but were we both immortal, I'd bet that Miami doesn't even exist in 2100. Or underwater, or levelled by massive hurricanes, or both.
Because five years is an awful small time speaking about climate, and an awful long time trying to predict weather.
Cheers,
I guess I've been trolled. If so, good one, congratulations. But just in case you're serious:
All apologies to the "butterfly effect",
Apologies accepted (the Butterfly Effect)
but small changes tend to be absorbed or subsumed by the existing system dynamics.
The operative word being "tend".
My driving my car to work tomorrow, or not, is a small change. But my doing so, or not, will have no appreciable effect on climate.
Here you're almost certainly right (notice the "almost")
EVERYONE not driving at all tomorrow may have localized effects... but again, in all probability, will have no significant effect when measured on a planetary scale.
Now we're down the slippery slope... You being right or not depends on your definition of "everyone", "at all" and "tomorrow".
If you meant "most people will carpool to work next Friday", you'd be probably right (notice how we went from "almost certainly" to "probably").
On the other side, if you meant "nobody is going to use an oil powered vehicle from tomorrow on", you were almost certainly wrong. It indeed would "have a significant effect when measured on a planetary scale".
A half a degree mean increase in temp may cause a major change, or again, be nothing more than a half a degree increase...
And that's the crux of the problem: your comment is both right and irrelevant.
Because what you're saying is essentially "unpredictable systems are,well, unpredictable, so let's not worry".
Let's use an example: a guy is forced to toss a coin, heads nothing happens, tails they cut one finger off. He could have a good streak, but eventually his piano playing is going to suffer.
And our chances are much, much worse: head or tails we lose fingers, if the coin lands on the edge and stays up we're safe. Really.
I, for one, don't like these odds. Maybe you're braver.
Cheers,
Carlos Cesar
how can you claim that even a small change of mean temperature is [statement of fact] going to cause massive disruptions?
Well, half a degree may be a small change in terms of choosing a jacket, but as energy kept in the global system is a rather big deal.
And as part of a feedbacksystem, like: less Artic ice, reduced albedo, more Sun energy absorbed by the sea, hotter air over the sea, and then even less ice, is scary.
In fact, is even possible that these disruptions cancel themselves out somehow, and the system remains in phase space, but it doesn't look like a smart bet.
Cheers,