Who wears a tinfoil hat? The people who accuse the world's scientists of engaging in a gigantic conspiracy, that's who.
As for the rest of you post, I am advocating these think tanks and individuals be treated as terrorists. We didn't try and hang each and every Nazi - we went after the masterminds. This is exactly what needs to be done here by the state.
So you don't really have a point, do you? You don't really have anything to say about the people who are, just as I described, shouting "no fire" in a crowded burning theater and attempting to hold the doors shut against the firemen.
It's not about "disagreeing with me" . It's about reality and denying it and the consequences thereof.
That's about as basic as it gets when it comes to law, justice and the real world consequences of a chosen set of actions.
The fact is that this is terrorism by any other name. This is Charles Manson directing the activities of his Family. The Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and all the rest of the rogues gallery of Koch Instruments are effectively building a bomb - a bomb named inaction- that will kill every one of us and our children, and they are fully intent on setting that bomb off.
These individuals are a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America and they need to be dealt with within that defining context and no other. It is directly because of their actions that steps needed to preserve our civilization against catastrophic climate change have not been taken despite the fact they're well within our ability:
I understand that many reading this will not see advocating for provably suicidal policies and conspiring to influence society to take suicidal steps as a crime. To them I say- the definition of what is criminal does and must change because criminals adapt and change. The means they have to effect their ends change and the scope of devastation they can effect enlarges. The purpose of a system of laws is to protect society against the self chosen behaviour of criminals, whatever that behaviour may be. Criminals should not expect that they can evade justice by gaming the law.
It's criminals themselves who force society's and and decide what laws will come to exist. In a free society that seeks to protect the greatest freedom for each individual and which values liberty, the rule of law is by nature reactionary. But that cannot mean that society will permit criminals to leverage that permissive attitude into an act of world wide homicide.
There is ONE objective reality, not many. This conservative Post Modernist bullshit whereby YOU have YOUR reality but conservatives get THEIR OWN version of reality is cultural and planetary suicide.
There is ONE reality and human caused climate change is a fact of that reality.Continued inaction will lead directly to the extinction of civilization. Those are facts. Anyone advocating for that course of non-action is acting as a terrorist against everyone in every nation who is alive now or will be at all times forward.
That is a fact, not an opinion.
Remember, it really didn't matter that the Nazis "really believed" their load of scientific crap they used to justify their genocidal policies. We still prosecuted them in Nuremberg , then we found them guilty and then we hung them.
This is exactly what needs to be done with the individuals and funders of these denier organizations. No one cares if you *really believe* your bullshit or you know you're lying through your teeth. Neither does it matter that in your view your *rights* include to the *right* to yell "no fire!!" in a burning theater.
It's amusing to see that people who are attempting to implement policies which we know will lead to mass death on a scale which will dwarf the body count and social upheaval of WWII think they can get away with it because they've found a worm hole in the rule of law to squeeze through on the other side of which no one can touch them.
In Nuremberg, the Allies faced a similar problem. Because the victims of the Nazis were not enemy troops, the Geneva Convention did not apply.
Similarly because the victims were under Nazi rule at the time, they were subject to German law and no Nazi broke any German law.
This was the first thrust of the defense the Nazis raised- "hey, we broke no law..."
And what was the solution the Allies came up with in Nuremberg? We just made up- ex post facto- the crimes we decided the Nazis had committed- something we called Crimes Against Humanity .
Then we tried them for those crimes. Then we found them guilty. Then we hung them.
Please. Rosen is acting as a proxy for Google et al who can't be seen going up against this for PR reasons.
I am not saying in its present form it's workable, but the idea that somehow the right to be forgotten is at odds with free speech is total bullshit.
At least it will create a set of significant disincentives to people who want to come forward with this material, who can expect to be prosecuted for doing so, and that's a good thing.
Why are these two rights even being compared when the more obvious comparison is between the right to be forgotten and the threat of being blackmailed, manipulated , artificially limited and determined by your youthful mistakes and bad judgement before your brain had even finished maturing?
I know that Slashdot is filled with techie types and programmers and a supernormal number of those are people who have varying degrees of Asperger's Syndrome and therefore will voice comments like "meh. They made their bed. Let them lie in it". The whole POINT of the EU decision is to prevent that type of attitude from doing the damage it would do. Such "tough luck" attitudes represent nothing but an abysmal lack of insight into human character and the calculus of human relations.
Never before in human history have people been unable to walk away from truly youthful indiscretions. The consequences of this are far reaching and it's a brilliant insight on the part of the EU to recognize the potential for destructive and malignant power plays and the potential for people who would otherwise make real, vital contributions to society to exclude themselves from the public scrutiny that accomplishment would necessarily bring if a woman thought that the picture of the . of herself with the banana would inevitably surface one day.
This is something completely new- a forever memory machine focused in on you from the time of your birth, relentlessly taking pictures recording thoughts and documenting events. No creative person can survive that unscathed.
Now please, let the "fuck them, tough luck" commenters take the floor.... but before they do, please, give generously:
If searching for the KKK leadership somehow , through sheer public outrage and the collective , uncoordinated effort that incited resulted in some nastiness about the KKK's views to pop up who would say Google has a problem and the KKK is being victimized?
Rick Santorum has major mental illness- that's fact, not an opinion. He's in deep denial about AGW and loudly espouses theories which are in direct conflict with physics and chemistry. His opinions on homosexuality are more of the same and in direct conflict with established psychology. It's not society's fault if Rick Santorum is a regressive denier know-nothing who through sheer ignorance supports ecocidal mass murder and homophobic viewpoints .
Given the implications of AGW upon all of us and all our children, Santorum should consider that he's getting off easy being lampooned only for his anti-scientific position on homosexuality.
I think it's very important that all arguments for software patents be well voiced and well understood so that we can tease out what exactly is wrong with them and launch an effective rebuttal.
Towards that end I actually RFTA, or what there was of it.
-1 to whomoever promoted this and voted it into Slashdot.
Sorry, but there is no *argument* there to be examined. There is kvetching, there is name calling , there are broad assertions of unproven facts, some bad analogizing all topped off with gross generalizations of the motivations and characters of his opponents.
But no argument and no new angle or approach or insight that hasn't been offered and rebutted a million times before.
This is an important subject; a real contribution and analysis of the substantive issues presented by either side is Slashdot worthy. That little opinion piece was just drivel .
It's mot really sad. It's really dangerous. This is the same crowd that invented the Kill The Gays bill in Uganda and through the promotion of Cretinism, er i mean Creationism, has laid the intellectual and cultural grouondwork for denying global warming.
Christians are dangerous fanatics with a dangerous set of ideas and the determination and financing to implement those ideas.
So it's not sop much that' it's "sad"; it would be sad if a few scattered people still subscribed to a Bronze Age view of reality. It's terrifying and its a call to arms against the spread of this disease to China and Africa and elsewhere.
Yeah learn to adapt. You can always rewrite the laws of chemistry biology and physics to adapt to anything within any time frame in such a way as human beings will continue to survive. Don't be a naysayer! America can do ANYTHING it sets its mind too!
What? Oh I see. Let Darwin decide who lives and dies because that's "natural" and we shouldn't interfere with whatever is going to happen naturally?
No way. I admit I saw the dark side of FB early on and opted out (thank gawd) and I don't know anything that doesn't bubble up to the level of NPR but.. people exchange real money for fucking FB "credits".
Before I get into a a snark-guffaw endless loop, this is so? Zuckerberg is printing funny money at will and separating douchebags from real money in exchange?
Yeah and what DOES determine truth ? The process of science , the scientific method.
Rich0 replies:
Well, no, the truth is what it is. Nobody determines truth. Science is just a very effective way to figure out what the truth is.
OK I'll give you benefit of the doubt; you just parsed my sentence incorrectly.
Obviously, if you read the post you excerpted this from, I don't think science "creates" reality, i.e. "truth". I am obviously saying "what is the process through which humans determine (what the) truth (is)?" A rhetorical question I then answer- Science". .
Rich0 said:
The main problem with the global warming debate is that it isn't purely a scientific debate - it is loaded with bias and interests (something that impacts all science to some degree, but global warming to a very large degree).
Yeah and who is doing this? The fossil fuel industry. Only a kindergarten teacher thinks wisdom is to be had by splitting the difference and declaring "you're both wrong!"..
David and Charles Koch and the think tanks they fund and the scientists they support have knowingly and systematically manufactured false "doubt" about the veracity of the science of global warming for the purpose of preventing legislative action to control GHG emissions .
Such action is mandatory -not-optional- in order to save humanity from the ecological AND financial Armageddon that is barreling towards us.
If you doubt that, even in the slightest way, than you need to educate yourself and there is no better place to start that than here:
It is also being used to defend policy decisions that have huge ramifications. So, it isn't surprising that it is a big mess.
The "big mess" has already been made through our ignorant actions.
Now whether we like it or not, big action is mandatory to clean up that big mess if we are to survive and not go broke deploying desperate, last ditch measures which will ultimately fail.
OK this video is what it is made by who it's made for the purpose it was made for the audience it was intended for. Not my video; I can't answer these questions.
The basic fact is, Watts made an unfounded and erroneous accusation from his position as a completely unqualified and untrained outsider to the field . In most people's books, that's shameful. Literally, if I did that, if I wasted everyone's time and then refused to acknowledge my folly, I'd certainly be ashamed of myself.
Yet he shows no remorse and feels no shame.
Instead, he's still parading around presenting himself as an expert to gullible people, via Glenn Beck et. al., while being funded by the Heartland Institute- a Koch Brothers creation -and yes, that is extremely extremely relevant as is the connection to the tobacco-cancer denier machine which is laid out brilliantly and distressingly here:
.
So what we have is a guy who's massively wrong, who makes false statements about science and against climate scientists and their work, and feels no shame.
Who nevertheless reacts with rage and accusations against anyone who points out his utter lack of qualifications and piss poor track record with the truth, and feels no shame.
Who permits himself to be presented as an duly qualified expert and given the favorable treatment, attention and presumption of authority deserved only by those who actually put in the work needed to earn that, when he knows full well he is not, and is in fact, just a college drop out. And feels no shame.
Who's self promotion and constant attention seeking from the media, talk radio, FoxNews and various speaking engagements from denier think tanks stands in stark contrast to the abashed and reluctant "fame" that has thrust scientists who , with few exceptions, have lived quiet lives dedicated not to fame seeking but to science and who are genuinely horrified at the amount of media spotlight they're forced to endure. And feels no shame.
Who makes pronouncements regarding the greatest threat we have faced as a species, one which has the power, if it's not addressed, to literally make earth uninhabitable for everyone. And feels no shame.
Given that C.V., the diagnoses is pretty clear: narcissistic personality disorder
The diagnostic system DSM-IV, the preferred diagnostic system for this guideline (see Section 2.2.2), characterises antisocial personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that has been occurring in the person since the age of 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of seven criteria, namely:
You would have a great point if climate were the same thing as weather, but it's not.
Weather is the day to day expression of climate conditions in a certain geographical area. .
Climate is the study of the atmospheric and other forces which give rise to the conditions which create weather each day.
By analogy, we can predict what the population will be 20 years hence (although something may happen that changes our prediction) but we can't predict for any given individual whether or how many children they will have when
Just an analogy to get the point across. ON a large time scale, if you understand the driviing forces , you can predict what the future average . will be.
If you try to zero in on a daily or hourly basis, your prediction for that time frame is more likely to be wrong.
But you already accept this idea, right? You know because of the changes which cause the seasons to change that the temperature in July will be greater than the temperature in January. But for any given day, you can't predict the weather or even the temperature.
The reason it's this way is because you know the large forcing factors involved in the change of seasons and what those forcing factors will do to the temp generally.
But on an hourly or daily basis, you don't know. You have to express the temp for any given future moment as a PROBABILITY within a given RANGE
And not surprisingly, this is exactly how climate change projections are expressed. As probabilities within temperature ranges
Oh oh oh I get what you want. Because the video didn't say explicitly that Watts is making a false claim IN JUST THOSE EXACT WORDS and I said it showed he did make a false claim, then that means I lied.
OK I get it I get it.
Well at the end of the video they do explicitly say that Watt's hypothesis was disproven and since that hypothesis was a statement from Watts and no one else, then well, it does say he made false claims.
Yeah every document exists in an implicit web of background knowledge about its subject matter. Outside of this context, it makes no sense.
This one is no different.
This video exists in the context of Watt's public claim that the "flaw" he found in the temp data readings would bear substantially on the theories of AGW and invalidate them.
This is the exact assertion we're discussing.
Specifically he said From wikipedia:)
"the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature [...] during the twentieth century."[17]
As the video clearly states, Watts' hypothesis was disproven.
From Wikipedia:
By 2009, the project had documented over 860 stations using over 650 volunteers. In a report entitled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, published by the Heartland Institute, Watts concludes that "the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature [...] during the twentieth century."[17]
Prompted by his work, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration issued a preliminary report that charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the rest of the dataset surveyed at that time, and concluded, "there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."[18] Watts issued a rebuttal in which he asserted that the preliminary analysis excluded new data on quality of surface stations, and criticized the use of homogenized data from the stations, which in his view accounts for the creation of two nearly identical graphs.[19][20]
The Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres subsequently published a study by Menne et al. which examined the record of stations picked out by Watts' Surfacestations.org, and concluded that "In summary, we find no evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting." [21][22] In fact, the analysis of unadjusted data from poorly sited stations did reveal a bias, however, it was not the expected bias. The poorly sited stations measured maximum temperatures on average lower than the well sited stations.
The authors note:
Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (âoecoolâ) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (âoewarmâ) bias in minimum temperatures.[21]
So Watts is a crank and his "investigation " actually proved the opposite of what he intended it to prove
The video clearly states this at the end. If you can't find it, or if you can't grasp that Watt's is wrong and you are also wrong to defend him, it's not a surprise.
Are we having a Charlie Sheen moment here? Are you WINNING?
Exactly right. Congress makes laws and SCOTUS calls balls and fouls.
This happened with student loans as you'll remember. There's an entire generation of students who took out loans which were bankruptable under the same conditions as any other debt.
Then Congress retroactively re-wrote those laws, leaving those students with newly non-dischargeable debts.
SCOTUS said- they can do that because it's not taking away anyone's civil rights.
Congress can do it. It's your job to vote your congresspig out of office when he does.
Oh that's right. you LIKE your congresspig. , it's that other guy's congresspig that has to go.
Do as I do
Senator Franken is my congressman. Better believe I agree with him on almost everything. His vote is a fucking non-starter from me on account of SOPA and PIPA . You're gone Franken. Too bad. Other than that, I thought you were one of the best legislators I've seen in a long, long time.
Which means their opinion is not interesting because the opinion of celebs on highly technical matters is not interesting.
The problem with Penn and Teller saying AGW is false is that the consequences of people believing them are , in the real world, devastating
This is an issue with reality. Reality is one way, not whatever you want it to be. There is one, real and objective version of reality and that reality has the power to destroy us all if we dont' act in accord with its dictates.
How do we know what reality is? The greatest reality-revealing / lie-rejection machine mankind has ever built is called "science".
Deniers are in the position of elevating their own reasoning across the details of a domain they have no special training in above that of people who do have that training.
The population has been trained up to believe it can do this because society never pushed back against Creationism very hard. 60% of Americans don't believe in evolution. Now we see what the real world consequences of that
Evolution is real. Climate change is real. Science tells as close to the truth as humankind can get and there is not now nor will there ever be a better idea than acting on the best information and theories you have.
The alternative, to act on bad reasoning and poor theories and believe that somehow it will work out is engaging in magical thinking, which is exactly what anti_Darwinists engage in.
It's possible for a country to be so ignorant and deluded it destroys itself and the entire world. That's a possibility. Especially if that country is The United States of America
It's possible for commercial concerns to become so powerful in a nation that they effectively control the fate of that nation under all circumstances.
One of the consequences of just the fact that we're still debating this issue at this late date will be that corporations become disenfranchised in the political arena. This is the final assault of corporations on reality and on humanity that society is going to tolerate.
I said:
OK the claim Watts made was that the sensor data was so poor that it negated the temperature data as a valid source of data for use in AGW modeling.
You said: You said: If he's actually said that, why isn't it in the video?
OK are you claiming that Watts did not make this claim? Is that your point?
OK the claim Watts made was that the sensor data was so poor that it negated the temperature data as a valid source of data for use in AGW modeling.
Elsewhere Watts has claimed that this faulty sensor data undermines the entire credibility of AGW theories.
Sticking only with the first claim, the video explicitly says that Watts was shown to be wrong. The temp data was not so corrupted and inaccurate that it materially effected the conclusions based on that data.
It would be a scientific footnote , and certainly nothing non-scientist Watts would go on a crusade over, if the inaccuracies he was pursuing were known to have no material effect on the models apriori. He went at this making broad claims about the ramifications of the inaccuracies, all of which claims were shown to be false.
If all you know about Anthony Watts is from this video, google Anthony Watts denier to get at the substance of the critical arguments with his activities and the positions he's taken.
There might be soem slog inthe results so here are a couple of informative ones to get you started:
The Princeton Wedges concept is a path to get us from where we are to where we are going with as little disruption as possible to the status quo and using only available technology.
As part of this, they lay out where we are, where we are going to be by what date and what we need to do to get where we need to be .
Maybe this is something like what you're looking for.
Wow yes thank you so much these are going to be put to very good use. I never thought to check Wikipedia -duh.. I always think of it as an encyclopedia when in reality it's so much more isn't it?
They do do that. They say for instance that we need to cut our carbon emissions by X amount by Y time in order to prevent an increase in temperature greater than Z.
Is that what you meant? I am happy to provide links and I am collecting non-scientific paper links - YouTube videos, books this kind of thing b/c as someone mentioned not everyone is going to read links to scientific papers for the perfectly good reason that they can't understand them well enough. .
Here's the bottom line. Climate change is real.It's being caused by the release of carbon into the atmosphere. Deniers are causing us to take no action at a time when strong action is desperately needed.
If deniers succeed in forestalling action and people suffer as a consequence, they can expect to be treated like the criminals they are in a world in which very little sympathy is available to anyone for any reason.
There is one reality we all share. If you want to bet big that you're right, then you're unfortunately free to do it. The end result is that you've inflicted the worst injustice ever perpetuated on 'the rest of humanity who will absolutely hold you personally accountable. regardless of how unfair you think it is at that time.
In my opinion the world's government should begin now taking action against climate change through all means necessary right now and if anyone thinks they're going to stop that or interfere with it in any way , then they'll be subject to whatever means is necessary to stop them, no holds barred.
This is just war plain and simple and in the balance lies the fate of the future of humankind on this planet.
You can belong to a suicide cult if you want to and wage war on civilization, that's fine. Expect to feel the full brunt of the wrath of that civilization to be visited upon you, because it will.
Slashdot Mirror
Who wears a tinfoil hat? The people who accuse the world's scientists of engaging in a gigantic conspiracy, that's who.
As for the rest of you post, I am advocating these think tanks and individuals be treated as terrorists. We didn't try and hang each and every Nazi - we went after the masterminds. This is exactly what needs to be done here by the state.
So you don't really have a point, do you? You don't really have anything to say about the people who are, just as I described, shouting "no fire" in a crowded burning theater and attempting to hold the doors shut against the firemen.
It's not about "disagreeing with me" . It's about reality and denying it and the consequences thereof.
That's about as basic as it gets when it comes to law, justice and the real world consequences of a chosen set of actions.
The fact is that this is terrorism by any other name. This is Charles Manson directing the activities of his Family. The Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and all the rest of the rogues gallery of Koch Instruments are effectively building a bomb - a bomb named inaction- that will kill every one of us and our children, and they are fully intent on setting that bomb off.
These individuals are a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America and they need to be dealt with within that defining context and no other. It is directly because of their actions that steps needed to preserve our civilization against catastrophic climate change have not been taken despite the fact they're well within our ability:
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/
I understand that many reading this will not see advocating for provably suicidal policies and conspiring to influence society to take suicidal steps as a crime. To them I say- the definition of what is criminal does and must change because criminals adapt and change. The means they have to effect their ends change and the scope of devastation they can effect enlarges. The purpose of a system of laws is to protect society against the self chosen behaviour of criminals, whatever that behaviour may be. Criminals should not expect that they can evade justice by gaming the law.
It's criminals themselves who force society's and and decide what laws will come to exist. In a free society that seeks to protect the greatest freedom for each individual and which values liberty, the rule of law is by nature reactionary. But that cannot mean that society will permit criminals to leverage that permissive attitude into an act of world wide homicide.
There is ONE objective reality, not many. This conservative Post Modernist bullshit whereby YOU have YOUR reality but conservatives get THEIR OWN version of reality is cultural and planetary suicide.
There is ONE reality and human caused climate change is a fact of that reality.Continued inaction will lead directly to the extinction of civilization. Those are facts. Anyone advocating for that course of non-action is acting as a terrorist against everyone in every nation who is alive now or will be at all times forward.
That is a fact, not an opinion.
Remember, it really didn't matter that the Nazis "really believed" their load of scientific crap they used to justify their genocidal policies. We still prosecuted them in Nuremberg , then we found them guilty and then we hung them.
This is exactly what needs to be done with the individuals and funders of these denier organizations. No one cares if you *really believe* your bullshit or you know you're lying through your teeth. Neither does it matter that in your view your *rights* include to the *right* to yell "no fire!!" in a burning theater.
It's amusing to see that people who are attempting to implement policies which we know will lead to mass death on a scale which will dwarf the body count and social upheaval of WWII think they can get away with it because they've found a worm hole in the rule of law to squeeze through on the other side of which no one can touch them.
In Nuremberg, the Allies faced a similar problem. Because the victims of the Nazis were not enemy troops, the Geneva Convention did not apply.
Similarly because the victims were under Nazi rule at the time, they were subject to German law and no Nazi broke any German law.
This was the first thrust of the defense the Nazis raised- "hey, we broke no law..."
And what was the solution the Allies came up with in Nuremberg? We just made up- ex post facto- the crimes we decided the Nazis had committed- something we called Crimes Against Humanity .
Then we tried them for those crimes. Then we found them guilty. Then we hung them.
Before Nuremberg the concept of Crimes Agains
Please. Rosen is acting as a proxy for Google et al who can't be seen going up against this for PR reasons.
I am not saying in its present form it's workable, but the idea that somehow the right to be forgotten is at odds with free speech is total bullshit.
At least it will create a set of significant disincentives to people who want to come forward with this material, who can expect to be prosecuted for doing so, and that's a good thing.
Why are these two rights even being compared when the more obvious comparison is between the right to be forgotten and the threat of being blackmailed, manipulated , artificially limited and determined by your youthful mistakes and bad judgement before your brain had even finished maturing?
I know that Slashdot is filled with techie types and programmers and a supernormal number of those are people who have varying degrees of Asperger's Syndrome and therefore will voice comments like "meh. They made their bed. Let them lie in it". The whole POINT of the EU decision is to prevent that type of attitude from doing the damage it would do. Such "tough luck" attitudes represent nothing but an abysmal lack of insight into human character and the calculus of human relations.
Never before in human history have people been unable to walk away from truly youthful indiscretions. The consequences of this are far reaching and it's a brilliant insight on the part of the EU to recognize the potential for destructive and malignant power plays and the potential for people who would otherwise make real, vital contributions to society to exclude themselves from the public scrutiny that accomplishment would necessarily bring if a woman thought that the picture of the . of herself with the banana would inevitably surface one day.
This is something completely new- a forever memory machine focused in on you from the time of your birth, relentlessly taking pictures recording thoughts and documenting events. No creative person can survive that unscathed.
Now please, let the "fuck them, tough luck" commenters take the floor. ... but before they do, please, give generously:
http://www.autismspeaks.org/
This is crap.
If searching for the KKK leadership somehow , through sheer public outrage and the collective , uncoordinated effort that incited resulted in some nastiness about the KKK's views to pop up who would say Google has a problem and the KKK is being victimized?
Rick Santorum has major mental illness- that's fact, not an opinion. He's in deep denial about AGW and loudly espouses theories which are in direct conflict with physics and chemistry. His opinions on homosexuality are more of the same and in direct conflict with established psychology. It's not society's fault if Rick Santorum is a regressive denier know-nothing who through sheer ignorance supports ecocidal mass murder and homophobic viewpoints .
Given the implications of AGW upon all of us and all our children, Santorum should consider that he's getting off easy being lampooned only for his anti-scientific position on homosexuality.
I think it's very important that all arguments for software patents be well voiced and well understood so that we can tease out what exactly is wrong with them and launch an effective rebuttal. Towards that end I actually RFTA, or what there was of it. -1 to whomoever promoted this and voted it into Slashdot. Sorry, but there is no *argument* there to be examined. There is kvetching, there is name calling , there are broad assertions of unproven facts, some bad analogizing all topped off with gross generalizations of the motivations and characters of his opponents. But no argument and no new angle or approach or insight that hasn't been offered and rebutted a million times before. This is an important subject; a real contribution and analysis of the substantive issues presented by either side is Slashdot worthy. That little opinion piece was just drivel .
It's mot really sad. It's really dangerous. This is the same crowd that invented the Kill The Gays bill in Uganda and through the promotion of Cretinism, er i mean Creationism, has laid the intellectual and cultural grouondwork for denying global warming. Christians are dangerous fanatics with a dangerous set of ideas and the determination and financing to implement those ideas. So it's not sop much that' it's "sad"; it would be sad if a few scattered people still subscribed to a Bronze Age view of reality. It's terrifying and its a call to arms against the spread of this disease to China and Africa and elsewhere.
The Koch brothers roam free...
Don't got back to Iran.
Wow.
And I don't mean World of Warcraft.
What? Oh I see. Let Darwin decide who lives and dies because that's "natural" and we shouldn't interfere with whatever is going to happen naturally?
But Sir, deniers don't believe in Darwin either !
Before I get into a a snark-guffaw endless loop, this is so? Zuckerberg is printing funny money at will and separating douchebags from real money in exchange?
Surely no one is that stupid.
Yeah and what DOES determine truth ? The process of science , the scientific method.
Rich0 replies:
Well, no, the truth is what it is. Nobody determines truth. Science is just a very effective way to figure out what the truth is.
OK I'll give you benefit of the doubt; you just parsed my sentence incorrectly.
Obviously, if you read the post you excerpted this from, I don't think science "creates" reality, i.e. "truth". I am obviously saying "what is the process through which humans determine (what the) truth (is)?" A rhetorical question I then answer- Science". .
Rich0 said:
The main problem with the global warming debate is that it isn't purely a scientific debate - it is loaded with bias and interests (something that impacts all science to some degree, but global warming to a very large degree).
Yeah and who is doing this? The fossil fuel industry. Only a kindergarten teacher thinks wisdom is to be had by splitting the difference and declaring "you're both wrong!" ..
David and Charles Koch and the think tanks they fund and the scientists they support have knowingly and systematically manufactured false "doubt" about the veracity of the science of global warming for the purpose of preventing legislative action to control GHG emissions .
Such action is mandatory -not-optional- in order to save humanity from the ecological AND financial Armageddon that is barreling towards us.
If you doubt that, even in the slightest way, than you need to educate yourself and there is no better place to start that than here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXyTpY0NCp0&feature=related
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265919295&sr=8-1
Rich0 said:
It is also being used to defend policy decisions that have huge ramifications. So, it isn't surprising that it is a big mess.
The "big mess" has already been made through our ignorant actions.
Now whether we like it or not, big action is mandatory to clean up that big mess if we are to survive and not go broke deploying desperate, last ditch measures which will ultimately fail.
OK this video is what it is made by who it's made for the purpose it was made for the audience it was intended for. Not my video; I can't answer these questions.
The basic fact is, Watts made an unfounded and erroneous accusation from his position as a completely unqualified and untrained outsider to the field . In most people's books, that's shameful. Literally, if I did that, if I wasted everyone's time and then refused to acknowledge my folly, I'd certainly be ashamed of myself.
Yet he shows no remorse and feels no shame.
Instead, he's still parading around presenting himself as an expert to gullible people, via Glenn Beck et. al., while being funded by the Heartland Institute- a Koch Brothers creation -and yes, that is extremely extremely relevant as is the connection to the tobacco-cancer denier machine which is laid out brilliantly and distressingly here:
http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109
. So what we have is a guy who's massively wrong, who makes false statements about science and against climate scientists and their work, and feels no shame.
Who nevertheless reacts with rage and accusations against anyone who points out his utter lack of qualifications and piss poor track record with the truth, and feels no shame.
Who permits himself to be presented as an duly qualified expert and given the favorable treatment, attention and presumption of authority deserved only by those who actually put in the work needed to earn that, when he knows full well he is not, and is in fact, just a college drop out. And feels no shame.
Who's self promotion and constant attention seeking from the media, talk radio, FoxNews and various speaking engagements from denier think tanks stands in stark contrast to the abashed and reluctant "fame" that has thrust scientists who , with few exceptions, have lived quiet lives dedicated not to fame seeking but to science and who are genuinely horrified at the amount of media spotlight they're forced to endure. And feels no shame.
Who makes pronouncements regarding the greatest threat we have faced as a species, one which has the power, if it's not addressed, to literally make earth uninhabitable for everyone. And feels no shame.
Given that C.V., the diagnoses is pretty clear: narcissistic personality disorder
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001930/
with sociopathic tendencies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0015230/#ch2.s2
The diagnostic system DSM-IV, the preferred diagnostic system for this guideline (see Section 2.2.2), characterises antisocial personality disorder as a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others that has been occurring in the person since the age of 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of seven criteria, namely:
a failure to conform to social norms;
irresponsibility;
deceitfulness;
indifference to the welfare of others;
recklessness;
a failure to plan ahead
irritability and aggressiveness
Weather is the day to day expression of climate conditions in a certain geographical area. .
Climate is the study of the atmospheric and other forces which give rise to the conditions which create weather each day.
By analogy, we can predict what the population will be 20 years hence (although something may happen that changes our prediction) but we can't predict for any given individual whether or how many children they will have when
Just an analogy to get the point across. ON a large time scale, if you understand the driviing forces , you can predict what the future average . will be.
If you try to zero in on a daily or hourly basis, your prediction for that time frame is more likely to be wrong.
But you already accept this idea, right? You know because of the changes which cause the seasons to change that the temperature in July will be greater than the temperature in January. But for any given day, you can't predict the weather or even the temperature.
The reason it's this way is because you know the large forcing factors involved in the change of seasons and what those forcing factors will do to the temp generally.
But on an hourly or daily basis, you don't know. You have to express the temp for any given future moment as a PROBABILITY within a given RANGE
And not surprisingly, this is exactly how climate change projections are expressed. As probabilities within temperature ranges
OK I get it I get it.
Well at the end of the video they do explicitly say that Watt's hypothesis was disproven and since that hypothesis was a statement from Watts and no one else, then well, it does say he made false claims.
This video exists in the context of Watt's public claim that the "flaw" he found in the temp data readings would bear substantially on the theories of AGW and invalidate them.
This is the exact assertion we're discussing.
Specifically he said From wikipedia:)
"the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature [...] during the twentieth century."[17]
As the video clearly states, Watts' hypothesis was disproven. From Wikipedia:
By 2009, the project had documented over 860 stations using over 650 volunteers. In a report entitled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?, published by the Heartland Institute, Watts concludes that "the errors in the [U.S. temperature] record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature [...] during the twentieth century."[17]
Prompted by his work, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration issued a preliminary report that charted data from 70 stations that SurfaceStations.org identified as 'good' or 'best' against the rest of the dataset surveyed at that time, and concluded, "there is no indication from this analysis that poor station exposure has imparted a bias in the U.S. temperature trends."[18] Watts issued a rebuttal in which he asserted that the preliminary analysis excluded new data on quality of surface stations, and criticized the use of homogenized data from the stations, which in his view accounts for the creation of two nearly identical graphs.[19][20]
The Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres subsequently published a study by Menne et al. which examined the record of stations picked out by Watts' Surfacestations.org, and concluded that "In summary, we find no evidence that the CONUS average temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting." [21][22] In fact, the analysis of unadjusted data from poorly sited stations did reveal a bias, however, it was not the expected bias. The poorly sited stations measured maximum temperatures on average lower than the well sited stations.
The authors note: Results indicate that there is a mean bias associated with poor exposure sites relative to good exposure sites; however, this bias is consistent with previously documented changes associated with the widespread conversion to electronic sensors in the USHCN during the last 25 years. Moreover, the sign of the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (âoecoolâ) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (âoewarmâ) bias in minimum temperatures.[21]
So Watts is a crank and his "investigation " actually proved the opposite of what he intended it to prove
The video clearly states this at the end. If you can't find it, or if you can't grasp that Watt's is wrong and you are also wrong to defend him, it's not a surprise.
Are we having a Charlie Sheen moment here? Are you WINNING?
This happened with student loans as you'll remember. There's an entire generation of students who took out loans which were bankruptable under the same conditions as any other debt.
Then Congress retroactively re-wrote those laws, leaving those students with newly non-dischargeable debts.
SCOTUS said- they can do that because it's not taking away anyone's civil rights.
Congress can do it. It's your job to vote your congresspig out of office when he does.
Oh that's right. you LIKE your congresspig. , it's that other guy's congresspig that has to go.
Do as I do
Senator Franken is my congressman. Better believe I agree with him on almost everything. His vote is a fucking non-starter from me on account of SOPA and PIPA . You're gone Franken. Too bad. Other than that, I thought you were one of the best legislators I've seen in a long, long time.
Which means their opinion is not interesting because the opinion of celebs on highly technical matters is not interesting.
The problem with Penn and Teller saying AGW is false is that the consequences of people believing them are , in the real world, devastating
This is an issue with reality. Reality is one way, not whatever you want it to be. There is one, real and objective version of reality and that reality has the power to destroy us all if we dont' act in accord with its dictates.
How do we know what reality is? The greatest reality-revealing / lie-rejection machine mankind has ever built is called "science".
Deniers are in the position of elevating their own reasoning across the details of a domain they have no special training in above that of people who do have that training.
The population has been trained up to believe it can do this because society never pushed back against Creationism very hard. 60% of Americans don't believe in evolution. Now we see what the real world consequences of that
Evolution is real. Climate change is real. Science tells as close to the truth as humankind can get and there is not now nor will there ever be a better idea than acting on the best information and theories you have.
The alternative, to act on bad reasoning and poor theories and believe that somehow it will work out is engaging in magical thinking, which is exactly what anti_Darwinists engage in.
It's possible for a country to be so ignorant and deluded it destroys itself and the entire world. That's a possibility. Especially if that country is The United States of America
It's possible for commercial concerns to become so powerful in a nation that they effectively control the fate of that nation under all circumstances.
One of the consequences of just the fact that we're still debating this issue at this late date will be that corporations become disenfranchised in the political arena. This is the final assault of corporations on reality and on humanity that society is going to tolerate.
No in any position of responsibility believes AGW b/c Angelina Jolie tells them it's true, so this is a non-issue.
I said: OK the claim Watts made was that the sensor data was so poor that it negated the temperature data as a valid source of data for use in AGW modeling.
You said: You said: If he's actually said that, why isn't it in the video?
OK are you claiming that Watts did not make this claim? Is that your point?
Elsewhere Watts has claimed that this faulty sensor data undermines the entire credibility of AGW theories.
Sticking only with the first claim, the video explicitly says that Watts was shown to be wrong. The temp data was not so corrupted and inaccurate that it materially effected the conclusions based on that data.
It would be a scientific footnote , and certainly nothing non-scientist Watts would go on a crusade over, if the inaccuracies he was pursuing were known to have no material effect on the models apriori. He went at this making broad claims about the ramifications of the inaccuracies, all of which claims were shown to be false.
If all you know about Anthony Watts is from this video, google Anthony Watts denier to get at the substance of the critical arguments with his activities and the positions he's taken.
There might be soem slog inthe results so here are a couple of informative ones to get you started:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Anthony_Watts
http://www.green-blog.org/2009/08/04/paleoclimate-scientist-glikson-cut-carbon-emissions-80-by-2020-to-avoid-catastrophe/
The Princeton Wedges concept is a path to get us from where we are to where we are going with as little disruption as possible to the status quo and using only available technology.
As part of this, they lay out where we are, where we are going to be by what date and what we need to do to get where we need to be .
Maybe this is something like what you're looking for.
http://cmi.princeton.edu/wedges/intro.php
Wow yes thank you so much these are going to be put to very good use. I never thought to check Wikipedia -duh.. I always think of it as an encyclopedia when in reality it's so much more isn't it?
They do do that. They say for instance that we need to cut our carbon emissions by X amount by Y time in order to prevent an increase in temperature greater than Z.
Is that what you meant? I am happy to provide links and I am collecting non-scientific paper links - YouTube videos, books this kind of thing b/c as someone mentioned not everyone is going to read links to scientific papers for the perfectly good reason that they can't understand them well enough. .
If deniers succeed in forestalling action and people suffer as a consequence, they can expect to be treated like the criminals they are in a world in which very little sympathy is available to anyone for any reason.
There is one reality we all share. If you want to bet big that you're right, then you're unfortunately free to do it. The end result is that you've inflicted the worst injustice ever perpetuated on 'the rest of humanity who will absolutely hold you personally accountable. regardless of how unfair you think it is at that time.
In my opinion the world's government should begin now taking action against climate change through all means necessary right now and if anyone thinks they're going to stop that or interfere with it in any way , then they'll be subject to whatever means is necessary to stop them, no holds barred.
This is just war plain and simple and in the balance lies the fate of the future of humankind on this planet.
You can belong to a suicide cult if you want to and wage war on civilization, that's fine. Expect to feel the full brunt of the wrath of that civilization to be visited upon you, because it will.