Exactly right. If you are going to launch a lot of experimental products you have to be willing to put em down almost as fast when they don't succeed lest you get so many going you can't keep launching new ones and get stuck maintaining a bunch of losers forever out of fear that the few people who did like them will scream loudly on Internet fora. For years everyone made jokes about the beta label Google put on everything, well now ya know.
> For most cases that cost more than $40 or so, the PSU that comes with it will be adequate, for most users.:)
It isn't about the wattage. You want a solid power supply, that won't crap out on ya in subtle ways. And getting one with the 80% efficiency rating is a pretty good idea these days. But while everyone these days cares about green, most still don't know to get one with Power factor Correction.. Which becomes more important when you buy the other part I consider 'part' of a real PC setup, the UPS. You get back some of the money spent on the power supply in a smaller rated UPS which can deliver the same runtime into the smaller more balanced load as a larger UPS into a crappy supply.
Ever had a machine that was just unstable? Even with the penguin? Swapping the clunker pack in 500W power supply that came free with the case for a quality (a pimped out gamer product may or may not be quality) power supply, even one rated at only 320W if the box isn't stuffed, cures about half of those cases. If the power supply doesn't it fix swap motherboards. Assuming you already ran memcheck for a day before swapping anything of course.
The problem is a quality power supply looks almost exactly like a piece of crap. Adding some lights doesn't make it quality, neither does putting black wrap on the wires. We users lack the test gear to discover for ourselves so we must depend on reviews or reputation of the vendor. If you can afford PC Power and Cooling of course you go for it, Otherwise I have had good experience with either Antec or Enermax's better stuff, get one of their products with the 80+ and PFC ratings and you probably won't go wrong.
Ok, this got me looking at prices for the first time this year. Damn.
A more realistic goal would be a complete system. I just built one for $350 just shopping newegg with a 20" LED backlit monitor, DVI connection to a motherboard with same, and better Radeon 4250 graphics, better AMDX2 250 Regor 3.0GHz and DDR3 memory and an optical drive + decent Logitech keyboard and optical mouse. This stuff is seriously cheap now. Moved the goalposts to $400 and put it all in a real case with a real power supply. When you are really building a computer, NEVER skimp on the power supply. You lose every time when you do that.
All I can say is there is no longer a reason for anyone who isn't a hardcore gamer to spend over a thousand on a desktop PC anymore. You can go nuts and stay under that mark now. Dual monitors and RAID1 on the main drive? Why not and there will still be plenty left over to stuff RAM, more faster cores and offboard video in and still stay under a thousand.
I had to leave newegg for a cpu to do it but here is what I did in ten minutes:
CPU ADO3800IAA5CU AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 3800 2.0GHz AM2 OEM $21 + unknown shipping from a vendor called StarMicro I picked up from pricewatch.
Foxconn KS188-ISO450 Black / Silver SGCC MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply 39.99+9.99 shipping, newegg
Foxconn A76ML-K AM3 Ready / AM2+ / AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $49.99 newegg, free shipping. Cheapest I could find with onboard video supported by free software. Yes, I try to be RMS pure.
Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N6K2/2G 24.99, newegg with free shipping
Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $39.99 with free shipping
Thermaltake CL-P0503 70mm Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler for AMD 65W Series $9.99, newegg and free shipping
That gets me $195.94 + the unknown shipping on the CPU for everything delivered and I didn't play any stupid rebate games doing it.
The point of I did it in less time that I took paging through the PCRag story. Slight exageration, but they are still lame. I could probably shave enough off enough to squeeze in an optical drive and still deliver under the $200 limit just by going with Nvidia graphics. Compromise on the HDD and it is trivial. Computers are cheap.
Oh bullpoop. That guy is no more Kenyan than I am. His lilly white hippy momma hooked up in college with a foreign student and got preggers. Daddy abandoned his mistake before he was old enough to even say "dada" and there is a growing body of evidence they had split up before she even gave birth. Yea his skin pigmentation is halfrican but in every way matters that dude is painfully white. Raised by mom and her 2nd hubby until that got to be a drag and he was shipped back to granny to be raised as a upper middle class socialist/yuppie and sent to an exclusive private school where he spent his time getting high.... like most preppies of his time. When he goes off to college he did cash in on his skin to get an easy ride (and probably cashed in on the exotic heritage to get scholarships reserved for foreigners, explaining some of the reluctance to release transcripts) and spent more time hanging with all the right hippies and marxists than studying. At some point in there he did decide (again, almost certainly for the cache of it in the multi-culti crowds he was hanging in) to 'discover' his 'roots' and switched from being Barry to Barack to be cool. And has rode the affirmitive action gravy train all the way to the white house. But he hangs with white upper class uni types. He talks like a white upper class uni type. He behaves like an upper class white uni type. And as POTUS he governs as one. Sometimes ya gotta call a spade a spade, but in this case we gotta call a yuppie a yuppie.
No it didn't. They are still boned, but their friends in government bailed them out as 'too big to fail.' Wait until they see the price. They government owns their asses now and just wait until they decide to collect on that debt.
Too big to fail should be too big to exist. And if it manages to exist anyway, you let it fail and let the chips fall because the problems caused by propping up dead banks is far greater in the long run that taking the hit of letting them fail. Just one more reason this recession is verging on another depression.
Same for alternate energy. Handing them big subsidy checks doesn't help the poorly managed ones die like they should. If you want to encourage em and just can't let the market operate on its own terms, sign contracts to buy the products even if less green but cheaper ones are available, but don't hand them money until they deliver, just like with any other vendor.
> Of course that's not actually possible with 'green technology' because very little of it makes any financial sense.
This is by design. Alternative energy is like alternative music, the second it becomes popular it isn't alternative anymore. With energy the second it shows signs of being economically viable the same nutballs who wanted it subsidised and were heaping praise on it suddenly realize why it is evil.
Because when an energy source is only used small scale it is easy to ignore things, scale it up to production and suddenly the problems, which were there all along, become more obvious. Also because most greens do not actually want alternative energy, they want the world to adapt to LESS energy. Many won't believe me, but try this thought experiment. Imagine an energy source that was actually perfectly 'green.' Limitless power with no ecological side effects from it's production. How many greens do you know who would rejoice at the news? No, they would bemoan this miracle for the fact it would allow us in the 1st world to continue to consume other non-energy resources.
But lets go down the list.
1. Solar? Great when a yuppie gets his subsidy check to put panels on his roof and preen about how concerned for the environment he is. Cover deserts with arrays to generate commercial scale power and no, there are lizards out there ya know.
2. Wind? Great idea to a green. Until you put up enough that the piles of dead birds become too big to ignore. And so long as they don't go where rich environmentally aware types can actually see them.
3. Hydro? Nah, that was the green miracle tech of yesteryear. It actually produces energy at marketable prices so it kills fish and makes for 'unnatural rivers.'
4. Tidal power? They like it now, but wait for some dead fish to end that if it ever does become viable.
5. Geothermal? Causes earthquakes when you do in on a commercial scale. Another one that works great on test scale but doesn't scale up.
6. Hydrogen? Idiocy, hydrogen is just a storage medium for energy generated some other way. If we had huge fusion plants it might be worth cracking hydrogen to let cars carry that bountiful energy around.
The energy problem is actually pretty simple. Unless you like handing Sagans of cash to people who want to kill us we have to get off oil. Yes we could 'Drill Baby Drill" here and get more, but probably not enough. We do however have a lot of natural gas. So run our cars on that while we look for something better. And build the crap out of modern safer nuke plants, if for no other reason that that without replacements the existing stock of nuke plants will stay online... and they ain't nearly as safe as a modern one. But that solution goes nowhere because it only solves the stated problem. The unstated problem is always how to make America live more in harmony with nature, i..e poorer, when stating that openly is a career limiting decision for an elected official.
> The faster an object moves through space the slower it moves through time > (relative to the observer of course) and vice-versa.
We said exactly the same thing. I stated it from the viewpoint of the object while you stated it from the observer p.o.v. If I set out for Alpha Centuri at.5C (from Earth's viewpoint) you see me going.5C on a course for our closest neighbor. But on the ship, as soon the engines cut off, I see myself at rest (what we call moving at C on the T axis) with the sort of wierd stuff around me that astronomers typically only see in the very far off universe.
And it is thinking about that sort of thing, and the implications that follow from it, that leads to the gates of madness. Our ape brains aren't built for that sort of four dimensional thinking and without a lot of training we don't handle it well.
Save yourself some trouble and get Relativity; The Special and the General Theory by Einstein himself. In his words "The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination..." however note those words were written in 1916 and education standards are somewhat lower now. What used to be required for admission are often not learned during university at all.
I know I have read it several times now and when I finish and sit and think a bit I'll almost 'get it' before retreating from the gates of madness. Think Cthulhu.
But I think it boils down to not only can we not exceed C we can't go slower either. Everything moves at C and the axis of that motion we perceive as time. And everything else we call reality is the contortions required to make that so under all circumstances.
Yea, this. They have a basic conflict here and I want to hear em address it. Almost every actor, actress, performer, newcaster, etc. operates under a stage name. A great many authors do so as well, often writing under several at once to keep their brands separated for marketing purposes. The screenwriters guild has a prohibition on namespace collisions so if you have the same name as an existing member you are required to pick a new one to write under. So unless Google plans on becoming the ultimate resource on the real names of the Hollywood elite (i.e. one stop stalker shopping) they are going to have to formalize the glaring exceptions they are already making on an ad-hoc basis into some sort of rule for when a screen name is allowed to be linked to a legal name. And then Cmdr. Taco can be himself again.:)
Someone who produces more than they consume. Unless you plan on taking up subsistance farming you need food, shelter, network connectivity, clothing and all manner of goods and services to be supplied by your fellow citizens. Unless you plan on depending on crime, charity or the violence implied in government 'income redistribution' you need to supply goods or services to your fellow man equal or greater than the things you get from them in voluntary trade. If you produce more than you consume just to survive you get to accumulate wealth in the form of material goods, property, etc. or in the form of debts from your fellows represented by money.
So with that basic explanation of terms out of the way we can move on to your concrete examples.
> Is a stay-at-home mum of 3 one?
While motherhood is essential to the survival of the species and a civilization, I'm NOT responsible for your carelessness. So the basic rule would be "If you can't feed em, don't breed em." By herself it would be difficult. She could either accumulate enough resources prior to get by, have some sort of business she could do while doing the mom thing, be a high powered high earner "Murphy Brown" type who earns enough to hire a nanny or she can be married. H. Sapiens has a long gestation period and one of the longest times to raise our young in the animal kingdom. Nature has equiped us with a common enough solution to this reproductive problem, longterm mating. The male remains mated to the female over a long enough time to provide assistance in childcare. So the above rule is extended to cover the mated unit/family in that the family has to produce enough to earn the produce of their fellows in voluntary exchange. Charity, mutual aid, etc is for cases when circumstances change after taking reasonable care. Sudden death, unemployement, disease, etc.
> Is a full-time cubist sculptor?
If you mean by full-time you mean someone who does it as a profession, if we assume these sculptures are desirable in voluntary trade then yes. If he has a rich benefactor who acts as a patron, yes. NRA grant? Parasite. Sorry to be blunt but if your 'art' ain't paying the bills don't give up the day job. Do keep following your dream if it is a passion though, the world needs art and everyone needs a good hobby. And practice makes perfect, eventually people just might start paying.
> How 'bout someone doing a full-time uni course in medieval warfare?
Probably not. That is why you take on loans or do what people used to do, work their way through school. Or win a scholarship. Not that there are many productive uses for that degree other than teaching it. Maybe consulting on movies? And some people take courses because they just want knowledge. But whatever floats yer boat dude as long as I don't have my labor seized to cover it you are free to persue happiness however you think wise regardless of whether I think it is a bad idea.
> Well, perhaps the goal should rather be to change that..
That is sorta the plan, to educate enough people that the politicians can't get away with the same old game.
> It still seems too blunt to me. For example, I support public state-funded welfare programs..
This is actually a good example. Whether you are a statist or just a misguided but basically nice person being lead by emotional appeal instead of reason I need to dig a bit deeper. I have to ask why do you support state funded welfare progams?
If We the People are really the feral base bastards the progressive's worldview requires us to be, why would we vote for a welfare state? That is the problem you see, if We the People are caring charitable folk we will take care of the truly poor without destroying their ability to care for themselves once their immediate problem is taken care of. On the other hand we have ample evidence both here in the US and in the welfare socialist countries around the world, that creating an entitlement culture destroys the people it claims to help. It takes a bit of thought to work it out instead of the cheap egoboo of believing that just vague caring and voting for socialists makes you a good person but our team argues that it is we who truly care about the less well off. We want to see private charity prevent people from starving in the street but to also help them become productive citizens instead of kept pets, something the State can't do.
So if you just don't want to see people starve and have been FUDed into believing that only the State can prevent that, there is hope for ya. But if you have bought into the whole redistribution of wealth, social justice, entitlement thing then you are in trouble. That would mean you are a statist and hadn't thought it through enough to even realize it. The notion of entitlement would be the red line. If you believe person A is entitled (as a fundamental Right, not charity) to person B's labor just because B has more resources than person C thinks is 'enough' and A has 'too little' you have crossed the line.
Lots of encouraging signs in your support for Federalism and the idea of putting decisions at the lowest level of government practical. If we could get a national consensus on just that it would solve a good half of the problems currently bedeviling our country.
Reading is fundamental, I conceded that one even though there is some debate as to whether we are still getting hotter or whether it leveled off over the last decade.
> Why is "All Of The Above" an inaccurate answer?
I am assuming you want to actually solve a the problem, right? If Gllobal Warming really is happening it is a problem (assuming it is going to push temps outside the fairly wide historical ranges) so it is more than just an academic exercise. Because if we don't know the cause we can't decide on a solution... unless your proposed solution just happens to be the green agenda, i.e. stop 'raping the earth' and return to a preindustrial standard of living. If it is CO2 we build nuke plants like there is no tomorrow. If it deforestation we stop that and probably plant the crap out of trees.
> The proposed solutions are much cheaper than relocating the entire populations of cities.
Not when we will have generations to do it. All we would do is determine the likely sea rise and don't allow new construction in locations likely to drop below sea level. As storms, fires, etc. wipe out structures on the beaches and lowlands they get rebuilt on higher ground. And remember there will be offsetting pluses, viable cropland in areas that aren't currently arable. That is the sort of calculus we should be talking about. How much will various plans to slow/'stop the warming cost vs the costs/benefits of the warming occuring. If it is going to get so hot we will all be huddled in Antartica if we do nothing a lot more expense in avoidance is justified, if sea levels will rise six feet over a century if we do nothing we should probably just adapt.
Remember that if AGW is really caused by CO2 that is going to stop on its own eventually as we start running out of dead dinosaurs. The reality of that will eventually drive the price up enough the marketplace will provide a solution.
But all of that discussion can only come after we prove beyond a reasonable doubt any warming going on isn't cyclical, is caused by man, we know the cause and we have a viable plan (politically and scientifically viable) on the table to slow/stop it.
> I'm not a Latin expert, but shouldn't it techically be "Factio popularis delenda est", then?
Probably more correct Latin but no chance of a normal person being able to figure out the point. The Carthago/Carthage delenda est line is well enough known that I am banking on people being able to figure it out. Just put that.sig in a few days ago, I'll see how it works out. Gotta change it up once in awhile.
> Really? I thought there's way more than two.
Not as a practical matter. There are the totalitarians who believe that all answers come from the State, that individuals exist to serve the State. Then there are those who believe in the individual, that all just power derives from the People. While there are a lot of people who don't entirely fit the two stereotypes they are a minority. I suspect you aren't in the State camp. Not that there aren't a lot of differences within those two greater groupings, but almost everyone now can be placed into one of those who worldviews even if many of the totalitarians don't realize they are in that camp. And they are utterly incompatible.
Reasonable people can argue whether or not the Iraq war was correct policy, whether or not it turned out well in retrospect. Reasonable people can even disagree over abortion. (Depends when you think a new citizen exists if you really get down to basics and both sides can make arguments, the Constitution says 'born' but we could argue about an amenment in good faith on both sides. Nobody DOES argue in good faith currently, just saying it could.) But when one side believes "All men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights... etc" and the other side believes "From each according to their ability... etc." there isn't much room for compromise since each sees the world from an entirely different lens. When I tell a Prog to keep his damn redistributing hands off my and everyone else's wallet he will judge me as greedy, wicked, evil. And I think the thieving prog is evil. And neither side wants to compromise with evil, they want to conquer it.
> So the Americans who are "progressives" stop being Americans?
I tried to be careful in the original post in my wording but I'll try again. I defined "American" as those who believe in the ideas this country was founded upon. Progressives agree with none of them, thus they can't be Americans in the sense they are culturally or philosophically American. Although they are American Citizens in the sense they are in fact citizens of the United States of America. If you can suggest better terms please do so but Conservative doesn't fit since you don't have to be a conservative to believe the things the Founders did. Libertarians agree with many of those ideas but add interesting new ones as well.
> I'm not aware of any mainstream political parties in US which believe in principles espoused by the Founding Fathers or reflected in the Constitution.
True enough. But we folks out in flyover country are starting to push back and the Rs are starting to listen. There is no hope for the Ds, thus they must be destroyed. Only then can the Republican Party, freed from the long cold war stalemate where everyone who isn't a Progressive/Communist was forced to rally under the R flag despite many differences to hold off the statist hordes, can be split asunder as well. We need a real viable (as in not a single issue legalize pot joke of a party) Libertarian Party to oppose the more reactionary elements in the Republican Party. But that can't happen as long as everyone has to make nice to hold off the Democrats.
> What, precisely, do you mean by "destroy"?
I mean exactly that, Destroy. You can't kill an idea or a political party, but you can destroy it. As in no longer a mainstream political movement in the US at the Federal or State level (ok, CA excepted) and not holding enough local offices to be much of a threat. Their ideas driven out of the schools, universities and other posi
Pretty simple I thought. Carthago delenda est, Democrat delenda est. The Democrat Party must be destroyed.
It has become apparent that we have two political philosophies so far apart that there can be no compromise between them, one must destroy the other. Similar to the 1860s where the question of Slavery had come to a head and compromise was no longer possible between the two camps, one had to lose. Now we have the, for want of better terms, the Progressives vs the Americans. Because the belief system of the Progressive (for all intents and purposes now, the Democratic Party) is utterly opposed to everything the Americans believe in. Americans here defined as those who believe in the principles espoused by the Founding Fathers who wrote our Constitution. If this impass can only be resolved by one side destroying the other then let it be the Progressives who have only brought ruin everywhere on the planet to the degree their ideas have gained hold.
The sides diverge so much each rightfully considers the other evil. Most on my team only believes it is crazy talk when Donks call us evil but I finally realized that not only do they actually believe it, they were right to. Because by their moral code we ARE evil. And by extension the opposite is true. Ain't going to be pretty.
> Interesting that you quote Sagan, who accepted climate science. There was consensus in the community by 1979, according to a NAS.
Yes he did... The only problem is that he was flogging Global COOLING in his award winning series, Cosmos. I have the box set. He tries to retcon it in the addendum taped later but too late dude, you blew that one.
> by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance
You might want to reread my original post. But since you are the second warmer to have missed it perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I said:
"by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance"
I thought I was being pretty clear about the two ends of the range between weather and climate. Weather we can forecast with measurable skill, climate we haven't done yet. Not saying we won't ever do it (although the barriers are formidable) but we haven't documented a forecasting model demonstrating skill over random chance outside the error bars.
And as for your sig: "Jesus was a liberal", just no. I think I see the root of your problem, lack of reasoning skills. You can't identify a difference between charity and the welfare state. There is a pretty big difference between helping a poor person because you believe it is the right thing to do and seizing the product of someone else's labor by force of arms and giving it to some poor person. Agnostic myself but as I read it Jesus wanted YOU to expend YOUR money helping the poor, not elect a politician running on a platform of seizing someone else's loot to redistribute to the poor in the name of 'social justice.'
And no, Robin Hood didn't steal from the rich and give to the poor either. He was rebelling against an unlawful authority who was oppressing his people by stealing the ill gotten gains of the cronies of the usurper and distributing them back to the people who it had been wrongfully seized from. None of the Robin Hood legends show Robin raising arms against the lawful King once he returned from the Crusades. Robin returned to being a lawful taxpaying member of the nobility. Just to puncture another favorite myth of the left.
> Finally, if the science is *so* bad that even laypeople and researchers in far-distant fields can make valid critiques of it, where are all the heretics?
You aren't looking very hard for them if you can't find any. Since the CRU fiasco the floodgate seems to have opened. Every week or two you read of another 'brand name' scientist who is going public with doubts. A lot of em are probably just seeing which way the bandwagon is now heading but whatever. The AGW cult is on the way out, the odds of their seizing control of the world's economy and driving us back to the stone age are now pretty close to zilch.
But I think AGW itself is falsifiable. It's just not immediately falsifiable. If it's going to be falsified that might take another 20 or 30 years (not that I think it will be).
Then in 20 or 30 years AGW might be science. If we start now. You can't just short circuit the normal methods of science because the DOOM! factor is so huge. Doesn't work that way, just the opposite in fact. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
> Pray-tell, what specifically tells you Mann's original "hockey stick graph" is wrong just by looking at it?
Uh? He removed the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period to get a flat line leading up to the 'hockey stick' part of the graph. When caught out on it he admitted it but them weaseled an explanation for why. There is no why as far as I'm concerned, he altered reality to make a more compelling infographic for the mass media. Anyone working at a level high enough to have been involved with the IPCC should have caught that before they published it, because any fool with even an outsiders interest in science in general knows about those two historical climate events. Which is what leads me to suspect the whole lot of em as either fools or knaves.
Yea, but at least he didn't accuse all of us deniers of being in the pay of the Koch brothers or the oil companies. So I guess that is progress. Personally I'm still waiting for my f'ing check from either of em.
The funniest bit is how he just ASSumes that regardless of the evidence the 'deniers' will just keep on denying, in other words his mind is already made up about both AGW and the motives of those who disagree. Exactly the sort of closed minded idiocy he projects onto his opponents.
I can be convinced. But I want a little actual evidence first. And I'd really prefer it come from people who have enough integrity to disassociate from known frauds like Mann. That hockey stick bit was over the top indefensible. TO simply erase both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period to make a better infographic is an assault on the truth that no scientist should be permitted to get away with remaining in the 'science club' after getting caught at.
> Please note, meteorologists don't get their funding from "Climate change grants."
More importantly, their predictions can actually be tested and good theories sorted from bad. You can judge a weather model and assign it a skill rating. You can compare two and say "This model is better than that one." We get useful results from weather forecasting, unlike climate modeling. Bad weather forecasting has bad economic results, resulting in a feedback loop tending to cull out bad forecasters.
Agreed. It wouldn't settle the issue, but it would be a piece of actual evidence. As of now their side has zero evidence that passes the requirements to be called 'scientific evidence' and you need that and more to meet the 'extraordinary evidence' threshold.
So why don't these scientists put up or shut up? Get together and do your consensus thing (bah. that is politics, not science but whatever) and agree on the best model you can come up with. Publish a detailed prediction of the general climate with at least four seasons of each year and a at least hundred geographic locations. Predict whether the temp will be above or below average and by how many degrees. Agree in advance on a scoring system to judge an accuracy rating and at what accuracy level we will call it 'skilled.' Then we wait. Or we can spend the next decade in pointless argument because in case you guys missed the clue train public opinion has swung against you and your odds of getting your policy solutions in the middle of a worldwide recession are pretty much zilch anyway. So put this lost decade to work guys. Put up or shut up. Show me some SCIENCE.
Newtonian physics is good enough we can use it to fling probes to the edge of the solar system. That proves its predictive power. The computer I'm typing this on would not work if quantum mechanics wasn't pretty close to the final theory of the small end of the universe.
Name one useful prediction of AGW theory. Now tell me how many attempts have been made to falsify it. Hint: zero because such a test can't be devised and wouldn't be funded if it could. Such a test can't be devised because AGW makes no testable predictions.
> actually learn how science fucking works.
Can't speak for the original poster you were flaming, but I know how science fucking works. That is what causes an anger like a thousand exploding suns to well up inside me every time I see this shit about AGW. The damage you guys are doing to the reputation of science with this false religion makes me want to punch you guys right in the nuts. We NEED science. We need scientists to be believable to the general public. We need a wall between science and politics more than a wall between politics and religion.
The science is settled. Bullshit, and anyone saying that can't be a scientist or care one whit about it. Science is always one result away from a revolution. One testable, repeatable result trumps any theory. Every. Fucking. Time. Or it isn't science anymore. The only people who want a consensus are politicians and when I look at the warmers that is all I see, politicians trying to wrap the same stale socialism in the cloak of science. And I see scientists too afraid of losing grant money from the politicians to speak up.
> That being said, deniers need to come up with some actual credible science if they wish to engage in this debate.
Why? It is the warmers who want us to spend trillions and accept a greatly lowered standard of living because of their claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and to date the warmers have none.
Computer models are not extraordinary evidence unless they can demonstrate an ability to predict the future with measurable skill. None yet exist. Show me the computer model run from ten years ago that its creators published that accurately predicted the general climate of eight of the last ten years. If it existed the media would be trumpeting the 'conclusive evidence' of AGW even though the climate in the last ten years hasn't actually warmed all that much. But I'd agree it was significant because it would have demonstrated that climate modeling could predict the future with some skill and that we might want to look at what that model said about years 11-50 if it got 1-10 pretty accurate.
Your team has several hurdles to get over.
1. First you must PROVE the climate is getting warmer. Not that hard.
2. Next you have to prove it will KEEP getting warmer, i.e. that it isn't a cyclical process at work. It has been much warmer than it is now in the not too distant past. The Romans grew grapes and exported wine from England when they ruled there.
3. Then you have to prove it is the fault of our CO2 releases and not deforestation and other alterations man is making to the planet.
4. Then you get to propose a solution, prove it will actually work and then justify the cost against the cost of mitigation. It might be less expensive to just relocate some coastal cities in a mile and enjoy the extra harvests from Canada and Siberia to feed our growing numbers.
So far you haven't nailed #1 with the kind of extraordinary evidence needed to justify the solutions being proposed. But as for me I'm stuck on #2. Without reliable modeling you can't even attempt to prove whether it is a runaway process vs a natural cycle. Then add in some pretty obvious cases of outright fraud and it is no sale. I believe in science, I don't believe in climate scientists because they don't throw out proven frauds like Mr. Hockey Stick.
Yes, run the experiment..... oh yea, we can't because we don't have a couple of spare earths around.
So everyone runs computer models and expects us to believe the results of that instead. But I have seen some of what passes for climate modeling and it is pathetic. And it has NEVER produced a testable result. There are ZERO predictions made by a 'reputable' climate scientist from 10 or twenty years ago that matched reality 10 or twenty years later. No model can predict the weather a day in advance 100%, none can predict a week or a month out with much skill and by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance, i.e. zero skill. There are no models that any scientist would be willing to bet his life savings on to predict the climate a year, five years or ten years out. Yet they every one line up in front of Congress telling us that we MUST spend trillions because they have models of the next hundred years that they claim to have great confidence in... oh and by the way another billion in research grants would be nice thank you very much. In the end science is about testable, repeatable results and there are none in climate science yet.
AGW also isn't falsifiable so it isn't science yet, only faith. Don't believe me? Think I'm trolling? Then show me. Tell me how one puts AGW to a falsifiable test. And remember that such a test won't prove AGW if it passes but it has to be such that a fail would stick a fork in it. Think Michelson - Morley and classical physics.
And as for the NSF whitewashing Mann, what did anyone expect? The whole AGW industry, including the NSF, is so invested in Mann that to discredit him would end the gravy train for all of them. But after his hockey stick fraud anyone with eyes knows he is nothing but a scam and anyone who refuses to disown him is in on it. Anyone with half a clue can look at that and see it was so wrong it couldn't have been an honest mistake; it just doesn't pass the smell test. So non-scientists like myself look at all of the scientists who refuse to speak up and wonder if they are all just bottle washers and button sorters more interested in keeping the grant money flowing than seeking the Truth and kicking the infidels out of the Temple of Science. Science has no place for frauds and by covering up obvious fraud the reputation of all science suffers. The world is a complex and dangerous place and we really need to be able to trust scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly right. If you are going to launch a lot of experimental products you have to be willing to put em down almost as fast when they don't succeed lest you get so many going you can't keep launching new ones and get stuck maintaining a bunch of losers forever out of fear that the few people who did like them will scream loudly on Internet fora. For years everyone made jokes about the beta label Google put on everything, well now ya know.
> For most cases that cost more than $40 or so, the PSU that comes with it will be adequate, for most users. :)
It isn't about the wattage. You want a solid power supply, that won't crap out on ya in subtle ways. And getting one with the 80% efficiency rating is a pretty good idea these days. But while everyone these days cares about green, most still don't know to get one with Power factor Correction.. Which becomes more important when you buy the other part I consider 'part' of a real PC setup, the UPS. You get back some of the money spent on the power supply in a smaller rated UPS which can deliver the same runtime into the smaller more balanced load as a larger UPS into a crappy supply.
Ever had a machine that was just unstable? Even with the penguin? Swapping the clunker pack in 500W power supply that came free with the case for a quality (a pimped out gamer product may or may not be quality) power supply, even one rated at only 320W if the box isn't stuffed, cures about half of those cases. If the power supply doesn't it fix swap motherboards. Assuming you already ran memcheck for a day before swapping anything of course.
The problem is a quality power supply looks almost exactly like a piece of crap. Adding some lights doesn't make it quality, neither does putting black wrap on the wires. We users lack the test gear to discover for ourselves so we must depend on reviews or reputation of the vendor. If you can afford PC Power and Cooling of course you go for it, Otherwise I have had good experience with either Antec or Enermax's better stuff, get one of their products with the 80+ and PFC ratings and you probably won't go wrong.
Ok, this got me looking at prices for the first time this year. Damn.
A more realistic goal would be a complete system. I just built one for $350 just shopping newegg with a 20" LED backlit monitor, DVI connection to a motherboard with same, and better Radeon 4250 graphics, better AMDX2 250 Regor 3.0GHz and DDR3 memory and an optical drive + decent Logitech keyboard and optical mouse. This stuff is seriously cheap now. Moved the goalposts to $400 and put it all in a real case with a real power supply. When you are really building a computer, NEVER skimp on the power supply. You lose every time when you do that.
All I can say is there is no longer a reason for anyone who isn't a hardcore gamer to spend over a thousand on a desktop PC anymore. You can go nuts and stay under that mark now. Dual monitors and RAID1 on the main drive? Why not and there will still be plenty left over to stuff RAM, more faster cores and offboard video in and still stay under a thousand.
I had to leave newegg for a cpu to do it but here is what I did in ten minutes:
CPU ADO3800IAA5CU AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 3800 2.0GHz AM2 OEM $21 + unknown shipping from a vendor called StarMicro I picked up from pricewatch.
Foxconn KS188-ISO450 Black / Silver SGCC MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply 39.99+9.99 shipping, newegg
Foxconn A76ML-K AM3 Ready / AM2+ / AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $49.99 newegg, free shipping. Cheapest I could find with onboard video supported by free software. Yes, I try to be RMS pure.
Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N6K2/2G 24.99, newegg with free shipping
Seagate Barracuda ST3500413AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $39.99 with free shipping
Thermaltake CL-P0503 70mm Rifle Bearing CPU Cooler for AMD 65W Series $9.99, newegg and free shipping
That gets me $195.94 + the unknown shipping on the CPU for everything delivered and I didn't play any stupid rebate games doing it.
The point of I did it in less time that I took paging through the PCRag story. Slight exageration, but they are still lame. I could probably shave enough off enough to squeeze in an optical drive and still deliver under the $200 limit just by going with Nvidia graphics. Compromise on the HDD and it is trivial. Computers are cheap.
> it's "Kenyan" nowadays.
Oh bullpoop. That guy is no more Kenyan than I am. His lilly white hippy momma hooked up in college with a foreign student and got preggers. Daddy abandoned his mistake before he was old enough to even say "dada" and there is a growing body of evidence they had split up before she even gave birth. Yea his skin pigmentation is halfrican but in every way matters that dude is painfully white. Raised by mom and her 2nd hubby until that got to be a drag and he was shipped back to granny to be raised as a upper middle class socialist/yuppie and sent to an exclusive private school where he spent his time getting high.... like most preppies of his time. When he goes off to college he did cash in on his skin to get an easy ride (and probably cashed in on the exotic heritage to get scholarships reserved for foreigners, explaining some of the reluctance to release transcripts) and spent more time hanging with all the right hippies and marxists than studying. At some point in there he did decide (again, almost certainly for the cache of it in the multi-culti crowds he was hanging in) to 'discover' his 'roots' and switched from being Barry to Barack to be cool. And has rode the affirmitive action gravy train all the way to the white house. But he hangs with white upper class uni types. He talks like a white upper class uni type. He behaves like an upper class white uni type. And as POTUS he governs as one. Sometimes ya gotta call a spade a spade, but in this case we gotta call a yuppie a yuppie.
> It worked for the financial institutions.
No it didn't. They are still boned, but their friends in government bailed them out as 'too big to fail.' Wait until they see the price. They government owns their asses now and just wait until they decide to collect on that debt.
Too big to fail should be too big to exist. And if it manages to exist anyway, you let it fail and let the chips fall because the problems caused by propping up dead banks is far greater in the long run that taking the hit of letting them fail. Just one more reason this recession is verging on another depression.
Same for alternate energy. Handing them big subsidy checks doesn't help the poorly managed ones die like they should. If you want to encourage em and just can't let the market operate on its own terms, sign contracts to buy the products even if less green but cheaper ones are available, but don't hand them money until they deliver, just like with any other vendor.
> Of course that's not actually possible with 'green technology' because very little of it makes any financial sense.
This is by design. Alternative energy is like alternative music, the second it becomes popular it isn't alternative anymore. With energy the second it shows signs of being economically viable the same nutballs who wanted it subsidised and were heaping praise on it suddenly realize why it is evil.
Because when an energy source is only used small scale it is easy to ignore things, scale it up to production and suddenly the problems, which were there all along, become more obvious. Also because most greens do not actually want alternative energy, they want the world to adapt to LESS energy. Many won't believe me, but try this thought experiment. Imagine an energy source that was actually perfectly 'green.' Limitless power with no ecological side effects from it's production. How many greens do you know who would rejoice at the news? No, they would bemoan this miracle for the fact it would allow us in the 1st world to continue to consume other non-energy resources.
But lets go down the list.
1. Solar? Great when a yuppie gets his subsidy check to put panels on his roof and preen about how concerned for the environment he is. Cover deserts with arrays to generate commercial scale power and no, there are lizards out there ya know.
2. Wind? Great idea to a green. Until you put up enough that the piles of dead birds become too big to ignore. And so long as they don't go where rich environmentally aware types can actually see them.
3. Hydro? Nah, that was the green miracle tech of yesteryear. It actually produces energy at marketable prices so it kills fish and makes for 'unnatural rivers.'
4. Tidal power? They like it now, but wait for some dead fish to end that if it ever does become viable.
5. Geothermal? Causes earthquakes when you do in on a commercial scale. Another one that works great on test scale but doesn't scale up.
6. Hydrogen? Idiocy, hydrogen is just a storage medium for energy generated some other way. If we had huge fusion plants it might be worth cracking hydrogen to let cars carry that bountiful energy around.
The energy problem is actually pretty simple. Unless you like handing Sagans of cash to people who want to kill us we have to get off oil. Yes we could 'Drill Baby Drill" here and get more, but probably not enough. We do however have a lot of natural gas. So run our cars on that while we look for something better. And build the crap out of modern safer nuke plants, if for no other reason that that without replacements the existing stock of nuke plants will stay online... and they ain't nearly as safe as a modern one. But that solution goes nowhere because it only solves the stated problem. The unstated problem is always how to make America live more in harmony with nature, i..e poorer, when stating that openly is a career limiting decision for an elected official.
> The faster an object moves through space the slower it moves through time
> (relative to the observer of course) and vice-versa.
We said exactly the same thing. I stated it from the viewpoint of the object while you stated it from the observer p.o.v. If I set out for Alpha Centuri at .5C (from Earth's viewpoint) you see me going .5C on a course for our closest neighbor. But on the ship, as soon the engines cut off, I see myself at rest (what we call moving at C on the T axis) with the sort of wierd stuff around me that astronomers typically only see in the very far off universe.
And it is thinking about that sort of thing, and the implications that follow from it, that leads to the gates of madness. Our ape brains aren't built for that sort of four dimensional thinking and without a lot of training we don't handle it well.
Save yourself some trouble and get Relativity; The Special and the General Theory by Einstein himself. In his words "The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination..." however note those words
were written in 1916 and education standards are somewhat lower now. What used to be required for admission are often not
learned during university at all.
I know I have read it several times now and when I finish and sit and think a bit I'll almost 'get it' before retreating from the gates of madness. Think Cthulhu.
But I think it boils down to not only can we not exceed C we can't go slower either. Everything moves at C and the axis of that motion we perceive as time. And everything else we call reality is the contortions required to make that so under all circumstances.
Yea, this. They have a basic conflict here and I want to hear em address it. Almost every actor, actress, performer, newcaster, etc. operates under a stage name. A great many authors do so as well, often writing under several at once to keep their brands separated for marketing purposes. The screenwriters guild has a prohibition on namespace collisions so if you have the same name as an existing member you are required to pick a new one to write under. So unless Google plans on becoming the ultimate resource on the real names of the Hollywood elite (i.e. one stop stalker shopping) they are going to have to formalize the glaring exceptions they are already making on an ad-hoc basis into some sort of rule for when a screen name is allowed to be linked to a legal name. And then Cmdr. Taco can be himself again. :)
> Can you define "productive citizens" for me?
Someone who produces more than they consume. Unless you plan on taking up subsistance farming you need food, shelter, network connectivity, clothing and all manner of goods and services to be supplied by your fellow citizens. Unless you plan on depending on crime, charity or the violence implied in government 'income redistribution' you need to supply goods or services to your fellow man equal or greater than the things you get from them in voluntary trade. If you produce more than you consume just to survive you get to accumulate wealth in the form of material goods, property, etc. or in the form of debts from your fellows represented by money.
So with that basic explanation of terms out of the way we can move on to your concrete examples.
> Is a stay-at-home mum of 3 one?
While motherhood is essential to the survival of the species and a civilization, I'm NOT responsible for your carelessness. So the basic rule would be "If you can't feed em, don't breed em." By herself it would be difficult. She could either accumulate enough resources prior to get by, have some sort of business she could do while doing the mom thing, be a high powered high earner "Murphy Brown" type who earns enough to hire a nanny or she can be married. H. Sapiens has a long gestation period and one of the longest times to raise our young in the animal kingdom. Nature has equiped us with a common enough solution to this reproductive problem, longterm mating. The male remains mated to the female over a long enough time to provide assistance in childcare. So the above rule is extended to cover the mated unit/family in that the family has to produce enough to earn the produce of their fellows in voluntary exchange. Charity, mutual aid, etc is for cases when circumstances change after taking reasonable care. Sudden death, unemployement, disease, etc.
> Is a full-time cubist sculptor?
If you mean by full-time you mean someone who does it as a profession, if we assume these sculptures are desirable in voluntary trade then yes. If he has a rich benefactor who acts as a patron, yes. NRA grant? Parasite. Sorry to be blunt but if your 'art' ain't paying the bills don't give up the day job. Do keep following your dream if it is a passion though, the world needs art and everyone needs a good hobby. And practice makes perfect, eventually people just might start paying.
> How 'bout someone doing a full-time uni course in medieval warfare?
Probably not. That is why you take on loans or do what people used to do, work their way through school. Or win a scholarship. Not that there are many productive uses for that degree other than teaching it. Maybe consulting on movies? And some people take courses because they just want knowledge. But whatever floats yer boat dude as long as I don't have my labor seized to cover it you are free to persue happiness however you think wise regardless of whether I think it is a bad idea.
> Well, perhaps the goal should rather be to change that..
That is sorta the plan, to educate enough people that the politicians can't get away with the same old game.
> It still seems too blunt to me. For example, I support public state-funded welfare programs..
This is actually a good example. Whether you are a statist or just a misguided but basically nice person being lead by emotional appeal instead of reason I need to dig a bit deeper. I have to ask why do you support state funded welfare progams?
If We the People are really the feral base bastards the progressive's worldview requires us to be, why would we vote for a welfare state? That is the problem you see, if We the People are caring charitable folk we will take care of the truly poor without destroying their ability to care for themselves once their immediate problem is taken care of. On the other hand we have ample evidence both here in the US and in the welfare socialist countries around the world, that creating an entitlement culture destroys the people it claims to help. It takes a bit of thought to work it out instead of the cheap egoboo of believing that just vague caring and voting for socialists makes you a good person but our team argues that it is we who truly care about the less well off. We want to see private charity prevent people from starving in the street but to also help them become productive citizens instead of kept pets, something the State can't do.
So if you just don't want to see people starve and have been FUDed into believing that only the State can prevent that, there is hope for ya. But if you have bought into the whole redistribution of wealth, social justice, entitlement thing then you are in trouble. That would mean you are a statist and hadn't thought it through enough to even realize it. The notion of entitlement would be the red line. If you believe person A is entitled (as a fundamental Right, not charity) to person B's labor just because B has more resources than person C thinks is 'enough' and A has 'too little' you have crossed the line.
Lots of encouraging signs in your support for Federalism and the idea of putting decisions at the lowest level of government practical. If we could get a national consensus on just that it would solve a good half of the problems currently bedeviling our country.
> Not only is it not that hard..
Reading is fundamental, I conceded that one even though there is some debate as to whether we are still getting hotter or whether it leveled off over the last decade.
> Why is "All Of The Above" an inaccurate answer?
I am assuming you want to actually solve a the problem, right? If Gllobal Warming really is happening it is a problem (assuming it is going to push temps outside the fairly wide historical ranges) so it is more than just an academic exercise. Because if we don't know the cause we can't decide on a solution... unless your proposed solution just happens to be the green agenda, i.e. stop 'raping the earth' and return to a preindustrial standard of living. If it is CO2 we build nuke plants like there is no tomorrow. If it deforestation we stop that and probably plant the crap out of trees.
> The proposed solutions are much cheaper than relocating the entire populations of cities.
Not when we will have generations to do it. All we would do is determine the likely sea rise and don't allow new construction in locations likely to drop below sea level. As storms, fires, etc. wipe out structures on the beaches and lowlands they get rebuilt on higher ground. And remember there will be offsetting pluses, viable cropland in areas that aren't currently arable. That is the sort of calculus we should be talking about. How much will various plans to slow/'stop the warming cost vs the costs/benefits of the warming occuring. If it is going to get so hot we will all be huddled in Antartica if we do nothing a lot more expense in avoidance is justified, if sea levels will rise six feet over a century if we do nothing we should probably just adapt.
Remember that if AGW is really caused by CO2 that is going to stop on its own eventually as we start running out of dead dinosaurs. The reality of that will eventually drive the price up enough the marketplace will provide a solution.
But all of that discussion can only come after we prove beyond a reasonable doubt any warming going on isn't cyclical, is caused by man, we know the cause and we have a viable plan (politically and scientifically viable) on the table to slow/stop it.
> I'm not a Latin expert, but shouldn't it techically be "Factio popularis delenda est", then?
Probably more correct Latin but no chance of a normal person being able to figure out the point. The Carthago/Carthage delenda est line is well enough known that I am banking on people being able to figure it out. Just put that .sig in a few days ago, I'll see how it works out. Gotta change it up once in awhile.
> Really? I thought there's way more than two.
Not as a practical matter. There are the totalitarians who believe that all answers come from the State, that individuals exist to serve the State. Then there are those who believe in the individual, that all just power derives from the People. While there are a lot of people who don't entirely fit the two stereotypes they are a minority. I suspect you aren't in the State camp. Not that there aren't a lot of differences within those two greater groupings, but almost everyone now can be placed into one of those who worldviews even if many of the totalitarians don't realize they are in that camp. And they are utterly incompatible.
Reasonable people can argue whether or not the Iraq war was correct policy, whether or not it turned out well in retrospect. Reasonable people can even disagree over abortion. (Depends when you think a new citizen exists if you really get down to basics and both sides can make arguments, the Constitution says 'born' but we could argue about an amenment in good faith on both sides. Nobody DOES argue in good faith currently, just saying it could.) But when one side believes "All men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights... etc" and the other side believes "From each according to their ability... etc." there isn't much room for compromise since each sees the world from an entirely different lens. When I tell a Prog to keep his damn redistributing hands off my and everyone else's wallet he will judge me as greedy, wicked, evil. And I think the thieving prog is evil. And neither side wants to compromise with evil, they want to conquer it.
> So the Americans who are "progressives" stop being Americans?
I tried to be careful in the original post in my wording but I'll try again. I defined "American" as those who believe in the ideas this country was founded upon. Progressives agree with none of them, thus they can't be Americans in the sense they are culturally or philosophically American. Although they are American Citizens in the sense they are in fact citizens of the United States of America. If you can suggest better terms please do so but Conservative doesn't fit since you don't have to be a conservative to believe the things the Founders did. Libertarians agree with many of those ideas but add interesting new ones as well.
> I'm not aware of any mainstream political parties in US which believe in principles espoused by the Founding Fathers or reflected in the Constitution.
True enough. But we folks out in flyover country are starting to push back and the Rs are starting to listen. There is no hope for the Ds, thus they must be destroyed. Only then can the Republican Party, freed from the long cold war stalemate where everyone who isn't a Progressive/Communist was forced to rally under the R flag despite many differences to hold off the statist hordes, can be split asunder as well. We need a real viable (as in not a single issue legalize pot joke of a party) Libertarian Party to oppose the more reactionary elements in the Republican Party. But that can't happen as long as everyone has to make nice to hold off the Democrats.
> What, precisely, do you mean by "destroy"?
I mean exactly that, Destroy. You can't kill an idea or a political party, but you can destroy it. As in no longer a mainstream political movement in the US at the Federal or State level (ok, CA excepted) and not holding enough local offices to be much of a threat. Their ideas driven out of the schools, universities and other posi
> > Democrat delenda est
> What is your sig supposed to convey?
Pretty simple I thought. Carthago delenda est, Democrat delenda est. The Democrat Party must be destroyed.
It has become apparent that we have two political philosophies so far apart that there can be no compromise between them, one must destroy the other. Similar to the 1860s where the question of Slavery had come to a head and compromise was no longer possible between the two camps, one had to lose. Now we have the, for want of better terms, the Progressives vs the Americans. Because the belief system of the Progressive (for all intents and purposes now, the Democratic Party) is utterly opposed to everything the Americans believe in. Americans here defined as those who believe in the principles espoused by the Founding Fathers who wrote our Constitution. If this impass can only be resolved by one side destroying the other then let it be the Progressives who have only brought ruin everywhere on the planet to the degree their ideas have gained hold.
The sides diverge so much each rightfully considers the other evil. Most on my team only believes it is crazy talk when Donks call us evil but I finally realized that not only do they actually believe it, they were right to. Because by their moral code we ARE evil. And by extension the opposite is true. Ain't going to be pretty.
> Interesting that you quote Sagan, who accepted climate science. There was consensus in the community by 1979, according to a NAS.
Yes he did... The only problem is that he was flogging Global COOLING in his award winning series, Cosmos. I have the box set. He tries to retcon it in the addendum taped later but too late dude, you blew that one.
> by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance
You might want to reread my original post. But since you are the second warmer to have missed it perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I said:
"by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance"
I thought I was being pretty clear about the two ends of the range between weather and climate. Weather we can forecast with measurable skill, climate we haven't done yet. Not saying we won't ever do it (although the barriers are formidable) but we haven't documented a forecasting model demonstrating skill over random chance outside the error bars.
And as for your sig: "Jesus was a liberal", just no. I think I see the root of your problem, lack of reasoning skills. You can't identify a difference between charity and the welfare state. There is a pretty big difference between helping a poor person because you believe it is the right thing to do and seizing the product of someone else's labor by force of arms and giving it to some poor person. Agnostic myself but as I read it Jesus wanted YOU to expend YOUR money helping the poor, not elect a politician running on a platform of seizing someone else's loot to redistribute to the poor in the name of 'social justice.'
And no, Robin Hood didn't steal from the rich and give to the poor either. He was rebelling against an unlawful authority who was oppressing his people by stealing the ill gotten gains of the cronies of the usurper and distributing them back to the people who it had been wrongfully seized from. None of the Robin Hood legends show Robin raising arms against the lawful King once he returned from the Crusades. Robin returned to being a lawful taxpaying member of the nobility. Just to puncture another favorite myth of the left.
> Finally, if the science is *so* bad that even laypeople and researchers in far-distant fields can make valid critiques of it, where are all the heretics?
You aren't looking very hard for them if you can't find any. Since the CRU fiasco the floodgate seems to have opened. Every week or two you read of another 'brand name' scientist who is going public with doubts. A lot of em are probably just seeing which way the bandwagon is now heading but whatever. The AGW cult is on the way out, the odds of their seizing control of the world's economy and driving us back to the stone age are now pretty close to zilch.
But I think AGW itself is falsifiable. It's just not immediately falsifiable. If it's going to be falsified that might take another 20 or 30 years (not that I think it will be).
Then in 20 or 30 years AGW might be science. If we start now. You can't just short circuit the normal methods of science because the DOOM! factor is so huge. Doesn't work that way, just the opposite in fact. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
> Pray-tell, what specifically tells you Mann's original "hockey stick graph" is wrong just by looking at it?
Uh? He removed the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period to get a flat line leading up to the 'hockey stick' part of the graph. When caught out on it he admitted it but them weaseled an explanation for why. There is no why as far as I'm concerned, he altered reality to make a more compelling infographic for the mass media. Anyone working at a level high enough to have been involved with the IPCC should have caught that before they published it, because any fool with even an outsiders interest in science in general knows about those two historical climate events. Which is what leads me to suspect the whole lot of em as either fools or knaves.
Yea, but at least he didn't accuse all of us deniers of being in the pay of the Koch brothers or the oil companies. So I guess that is progress. Personally I'm still waiting for my f'ing check from either of em.
The funniest bit is how he just ASSumes that regardless of the evidence the 'deniers' will just keep on denying, in other words his mind is already made up about both AGW and the motives of those who disagree. Exactly the sort of closed minded idiocy he projects onto his opponents.
I can be convinced. But I want a little actual evidence first. And I'd really prefer it come from people who have enough integrity to disassociate from known frauds like Mann. That hockey stick bit was over the top indefensible. TO simply erase both the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period to make a better infographic is an assault on the truth that no scientist should be permitted to get away with remaining in the 'science club' after getting caught at.
> Please note, meteorologists don't get their funding from "Climate change grants."
More importantly, their predictions can actually be tested and good theories sorted from bad. You can judge a weather model and assign it a skill rating. You can compare two and say "This model is better than that one." We get useful results from weather forecasting, unlike climate modeling. Bad weather forecasting has bad economic results, resulting in a feedback loop tending to cull out bad forecasters.
Agreed. It wouldn't settle the issue, but it would be a piece of actual evidence. As of now their side has zero evidence that passes the requirements to be called 'scientific evidence' and you need that and more to meet the 'extraordinary evidence' threshold.
So why don't these scientists put up or shut up? Get together and do your consensus thing (bah. that is politics, not science but whatever) and agree on the best model you can come up with. Publish a detailed prediction of the general climate with at least four seasons of each year and a at least hundred geographic locations. Predict whether the temp will be above or below average and by how many degrees. Agree in advance on a scoring system to judge an accuracy rating and at what accuracy level we will call it 'skilled.' Then we wait. Or we can spend the next decade in pointless argument because in case you guys missed the clue train public opinion has swung against you and your odds of getting your policy solutions in the middle of a worldwide recession are pretty much zilch anyway. So put this lost decade to work guys. Put up or shut up. Show me some SCIENCE.
Newtonian physics is good enough we can use it to fling probes to the edge of the solar system. That proves its predictive power. The computer I'm typing this on would not work if quantum mechanics wasn't pretty close to the final theory of the small end of the universe.
Name one useful prediction of AGW theory. Now tell me how many attempts have been made to falsify it. Hint: zero because such a test can't be devised and wouldn't be funded if it could. Such a test can't be devised because AGW makes no testable predictions.
> actually learn how science fucking works.
Can't speak for the original poster you were flaming, but I know how science fucking works. That is what causes an anger like a thousand exploding suns to well up inside me every time I see this shit about AGW. The damage you guys are doing to the reputation of science with this false religion makes me want to punch you guys right in the nuts. We NEED science. We need scientists to be believable to the general public. We need a wall between science and politics more than a wall between politics and religion.
The science is settled. Bullshit, and anyone saying that can't be a scientist or care one whit about it. Science is always one result away from a revolution. One testable, repeatable result trumps any theory. Every. Fucking. Time. Or it isn't science anymore. The only people who want a consensus are politicians and when I look at the warmers that is all I see, politicians trying to wrap the same stale socialism in the cloak of science. And I see scientists too afraid of losing grant money from the politicians to speak up.
> That being said, deniers need to come up with some actual credible science if they wish to engage in this debate.
Why? It is the warmers who want us to spend trillions and accept a greatly lowered standard of living because of their claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and to date the warmers have none.
Computer models are not extraordinary evidence unless they can demonstrate an ability to predict the future with measurable skill. None yet exist. Show me the computer model run from ten years ago that its creators published that accurately predicted the general climate of eight of the last ten years. If it existed the media would be trumpeting the 'conclusive evidence' of AGW even though the climate in the last ten years hasn't actually warmed all that much. But I'd agree it was significant because it would have demonstrated that climate modeling could predict the future with some skill and that we might want to look at what that model said about years 11-50 if it got 1-10 pretty accurate.
Your team has several hurdles to get over.
1. First you must PROVE the climate is getting warmer. Not that hard.
2. Next you have to prove it will KEEP getting warmer, i.e. that it isn't a cyclical process at work. It has been much warmer than it is now in the not too distant past. The Romans grew grapes and exported wine from England when they ruled there.
3. Then you have to prove it is the fault of our CO2 releases and not deforestation and other alterations man is making to the planet.
4. Then you get to propose a solution, prove it will actually work and then justify the cost against the cost of mitigation. It might be less expensive to just relocate some coastal cities in a mile and enjoy the extra harvests from Canada and Siberia to feed our growing numbers.
So far you haven't nailed #1 with the kind of extraordinary evidence needed to justify the solutions being proposed. But as for me I'm stuck on #2. Without reliable modeling you can't even attempt to prove whether it is a runaway process vs a natural cycle. Then add in some pretty obvious cases of outright fraud and it is no sale. I believe in science, I don't believe in climate scientists because they don't throw out proven frauds like Mr. Hockey Stick.
> Now run those experiments,
Yes, run the experiment..... oh yea, we can't because we don't have a couple of spare earths around.
So everyone runs computer models and expects us to believe the results of that instead. But I have seen some of what passes for climate modeling and it is pathetic. And it has NEVER produced a testable result. There are ZERO predictions made by a 'reputable' climate scientist from 10 or twenty years ago that matched reality 10 or twenty years later. No model can predict the weather a day in advance 100%, none can predict a week or a month out with much skill and by the time you move from weather to climate the skill is pretty close to random chance, i.e. zero skill. There are no models that any scientist would be willing to bet his life savings on to predict the climate a year, five years or ten years out. Yet they every one line up in front of Congress telling us that we MUST spend trillions because they have models of the next hundred years that they claim to have great confidence in... oh and by the way another billion in research grants would be nice thank you very much. In the end science is about testable, repeatable results and there are none in climate science yet.
AGW also isn't falsifiable so it isn't science yet, only faith. Don't believe me? Think I'm trolling? Then show me. Tell me how one puts AGW to a falsifiable test. And remember that such a test won't prove AGW if it passes but it has to be such that a fail would stick a fork in it. Think Michelson - Morley and classical physics.
And as for the NSF whitewashing Mann, what did anyone expect? The whole AGW industry, including the NSF, is so invested in Mann that to discredit him would end the gravy train for all of them. But after his hockey stick fraud anyone with eyes knows he is nothing but a scam and anyone who refuses to disown him is in on it. Anyone with half a clue can look at that and see it was so wrong it couldn't have been an honest mistake; it just doesn't pass the smell test. So non-scientists like myself look at all of the scientists who refuse to speak up and wonder if they are all just bottle washers and button sorters more interested in keeping the grant money flowing than seeking the Truth and kicking the infidels out of the Temple of Science. Science has no place for frauds and by covering up obvious fraud the reputation of all science suffers. The world is a complex and dangerous place and we really need to be able to trust scientists.