I don't disagree that teaching makes professors stronger. But at the same time, we could lower the cost of education while educating far more people if we had more holograms like Alfred Lanning from I, Robot.
You forget the part where quality is also decreased. The vast majority of my professors have been far better than the best khan academy videos. Oddly enough, my most helpful professors were actually the best researchers as well... top names in the field who took the time to interact with students, even in large lecture halls.
Actually, I think this raises a legal question. There's probably enough case law covering this, but how do we handle a cross-border killing? Does Mexico extradite for manslaughter?
Bzzt no thanks for playing. I suggest you take your theory out to your local casino or stock market but make sure you bet a lot of money.
You're either a terrible troll or completely misinformed.
As everyone else has told you, you're completely wrong. There are 46,656 potential combinations for 6 rolls of a 6-sided die. Some of them overlap (e.g. 1/6/6/6/6/6, 6/1/6/6/6/6, 6/6/1/6/6/6, etc.) Of these 46,656, only ONE is 6/6/6/6/6/6. Thus there is a 1/46656 chance of this occurring... it's just as likely as any other combination in this sequence, but most of the other combinations result in the same results thus have a fairly normal probability distribution.
It's a load of over-sensitive could-possibly-be-thought-might-happen crap...Most petrol station fires are caused by static sparks from people re-entering their cars while they are fuelling...or just plain carelessness (i.e. smoking on the forecourt).
Actually, I've tried to ignite both gasoline vapor and gasoline with a lit cigarette... it won't happen:(. It was fun to put cigarettes out in a pool of gasoline, though.
As long as you light up away from the pump, and you don't allow the cigarette to light something else (like a few sheets of paper), it seems fairly safe to smoke there.
Not disagreeing with you, just making a slight addition:
However, is the government saying this because it's actually possible to get data off of a single-pass overwritten drive, or does the government merely want everyone else to believe that they can?
I doubt it's part of a misinformation campaign to make people falsely believe they have the capability; that really wouldn't be beneficial. All that matters, however, is that the US Govt. feels such techniques are theoretically possible and that the required technique+technology either is or could potentially be available in the future.
That extremely slight potential risk is more than enough to justify the government take the slight additional expense of destroying discs rather than wiping them.
...However, they also have competition from Fedex and UPS, but I find it interesting how USPS can deliver very lightweight and smaller parcels very cheaply ($5 and less), but they get really expensive as the weight goes up, whereas the other carriers basically have an $8-10 minimum, but as packages get heavier their prices become much better than USPS. Of course, the other carriers also charge you differently based on destination (or the distance of travel), whereas with USPS it's all flat-rate.
I imagine that's based largely on USPS's requirement to go by nearly every address every day, so their marginal increase in fees to deliver a package is minimal. UPS/Fedex, on the other hand, have to travel extra distances, make extra stops, etc. Simple enough economies of scale.
I've no idea why USPS gets so expensive with real heavy packages, but it could be the added difficulty in light of the way they deliver packages. A mailman can carry a few small packages and lots of mail on his person, but large/heavy packages will require extra care for delivery. It's just not their specialty.
That was the first thing I noticed. There should be some rule that states a minimum percentage of samples before statistical data can be published. A mere 0.001% of Americans would have been a sample of 30,800 rather than 1019 - over 30x as accurate?
And how hard is it to collect polling data these days. The most recent poll on Slashdot, posted yesterday, already has over 7900 votes. The prior poll from five days ago has over 27600 and ten days ago is up to 41300.
Keep in mind, the U.S. taxes *income*, not *wealth*. Having a lot of money sitting around isn't criminal. Only not paying tax *when you acquire it* could be criminal.
While true, I imagine someone who reported $200k/year income for the last 20 years would have to explain a $50m bank account. Even "wise investing" or "gambling" gains would have to have been reported at some point.
GP was suggesting that 30 vaccines a day is commonplace. I'm asking for any proof for his/her claims. Simple.
I'm not at all agreeing with the AC, but the military tends to give a whole ton of vaccines at once in basic training. Not 30, but it's still very densely packed.
I think it depends a lot on the subject. I can't imagine using a laptop in chemistry, but I don't know how students in the social sciences get by without one! Many professors provide lectures that are far more informative than the texts, and some of them test primarily from the lecture notes.
Some of us just take far better notes in electronic form... it's easier to outline, move things around, search/reference later, etc.
It depends on your field, your level of education, and loads of other factors.
Does a BA in Psychology pay off? Not unless you get the PhD or PsyD to go with it (otherwise you can expect decreased earnings potential). Does a BS in EE pay off? Yeah, at least it used to.
If your degree will allow you to work in one of the professional fields, or will lead to a higher degree with a decent chance of employment, then yes, the degree will probably pay off. If you're going to work in a low salary field, or one where experience means more than a degree, there's a good chance you're wasting your money.
As you pointed out, the study is irrelevant for scoring Fox News. Fox's most popular misinformative shows are its "commentary" shows: Beck, O'Riley, etc. Per the methodology of the study you cited, these shows were not included. Fox's actual news service is fairly unbiased, but "Fox News" really refers to its dominant commentary shows, which are highly, highly biased. You can't say "Krispy Kreme is just as healthy as Subway if you compare only their drink selections".
On top of the limitations of the study's methodology, and some other issues (I think their study is quite flawed), I'd argue another significant problem: Congressmen aren't necessarily representative of the population. I think you'll find that old, white, wealthy Christians tend to be more conservative than average, controlling for political affiliation. That destroys their defined center:
As a comparison, 50.06 is our estimate of the average American voter. This is based upon taking average scores of House members and senators after adding phantom (extreme liberal) D.C. House members and senators and weighting Senate scores by the population of the state.
That's the problem with their scale... there's no way to measure the average voter on the same scale, so they just went ahead and defined an arbitrary average, which I would expect to be a highly skewed number.
By contrast, they have Lieberman on there as ~75. You really think LIEBERMAN is halfway to the extreme left from center? Seriously? That's a flawed scale. I imagine Lieberman is fairly close to center... most progressives think he's far too conservative, most conservatives think he's far too liberal, and he's usually willing to side with either party as long as they make a few concessions to him.
Readjusting the scale with Liberman as the center puts Fox in a race with the Washington Times for furthest from center, and places the majority of other media outlets as center-right... about what most political scientists would expect.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical to say this, but Russia seems to love nothing better than undermining U.S. power. I doubt they'd take the initiative to set back Iran's nuclear program like that.
No, that's not cynical, it's just a bit off. Russia loves undermining US power, plenty of evidence of that, and the associated back and forth, ever since Brest-Litovsk.
The point is that Russia doesn't want to see Iran actually acquire nuclear weapons. That's some bad juju for everyone, including Russia. Russia wants the US to expend considerable effort and resources trying to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and they want to keep Iran there as an anti-West nation, but they do want the US to succeed in this objective.
He actually has a point, it's just a bit poorly worded.
The US uses single-member plurality districts, and that means, by definition, the representatives are selected only one per majority for each district. All citizens are indeed represented by their congressmen, but that does not mean the congressmen represent the views of all members of their districts.
I love to look at extremes to illustrate points, so let's use child molesters, as an example. Surely some convicted of the crime feel that it should be legal, but, I [believe, there isn't a single congressman on the record suggesting such. It's an extreme minority viewpoint and one unlikely to be represented in Congress during our lifetimes. I'm not saying it SHOULD be, just that it's not.
Do you have a better suggestion?
I do! Proportional representation, particularly of the German variety. Citizens get two votes, ballot has two sides. On one side, you select the party you wish to vote for. On the other, you select the candidates you wish to vote for. Votes are divvied up by various rules, but basically the top candidates go straight to Congress (parliament, bundestag, whatever), and the other seats are filled by %s matching parties.
Most nations have a lower limit (think significance) for these systems. 5% is pretty common, so parties with under 5% of the vote don't usually get represented. Overall, it's a more equitable way to divy up the legislature. It allows significant minority parties to gain representation and forces the legislative body to consider them when passing legislation.
With a system like this in the US, I imagine we'd have splits in both major parties. From left to right, Dems would split into Social Democrats and some sort of business/conservative/Christian Democrats, and Republicans would split into oldschool conservative, Tea Party, and perhaps a religious right party. Green Party would take some of the Social Democrats and get over 10% of the electorate, probably incorporating a lot of youth and historic non-voters.
No one party would ever have a controlling majority again, but compromise on major issues would be achievable... and we'd have a legislature that would be more representative of the population.
I'm sure they've been transferred as a result of other court proceedings. It's gotta be among assets awarded as damages somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if domain names came up in divorces, bankruptcies, etc.
I'll address your "real point" first, and then get to as many others as I have time for.
The real reason for my reply is simply to tell you, in reality, causation is determined in science using experiemnts. Not by making a list of four criteria each packed out with alarmist talking points.
No, causality requires these four in experiments as well. Lab experiments just make it easier to control these factors. Pretend you're testing toxicity of a compound. Does temporal ordering become irrelevant in a lab? Do you no longer need correlation? A causal mechanism? Are confounding variables now allowed?
No. Lab experiments make these things easier to deal with, and make it easier to rule out confounding variables, but it's still an issue. Think of the early false positive for cold fusion... which, IIRC, turned out to be due to a confounding variable: stirring the solution imparted energy on it which warmed it.
BasilBrush already pointed out that some of your claims are false. There are far more than one data point and one line of evidence. Every portion I can think of has multiple lines of evidence and proxies all pointing the same direction. The few potential issues, like tree rings, have well-understood problems.
Your forcing mechanisms are just theories, as yet unproved. Your opinion about whether you are being conservative are interesting but they don't add any credibility.
Theories don't graduate to "proven" status. The best a theory can hope for is to become an accepted theory. Evolution is at that point. So is germ theory... and so is radiative forcing. If anything, radiative forcing is more an observation than a theory, but the underlying theories behind AGW are quite sound.
So your answer to "Eliminate Confounding Variables" is to say it's somebody else's problem to find them?
No, my answer to "eliminate confounding variables" is to eliminate every confounding variable everyone has seriously proposed over a series of decades in which the majority were trying quite hard to discredit it. We're all out of contenders, and people stopped seriously trying to challenge it directly on this level long ago.
Is it possible there still some confounding variable that would shatter the theory? Sure. But it's not very likely. Both sides have tried very hard to find one (I didn't say only the deniers were looking for them, scientists aren't as stupid as you seem to think), and we've ruled out everything we think might be related.
There are almost certainly some minor errors. As has been pointed out elsewhere, all of the models have wide margins of error to try to account for this. As I said earlier, nearly all of the models attempt to make their assumptions and errors on the conservative side
I owe you a better and longer reply, but I'm pressed for time today and wanted to respond to your last point real quick.
At this point, as you implied, agnostics are looking for a nearly impossible level of proof. Unfortunately, that is a justified stance, because both sides are so full of liars, politicians, corporations, and media mis-reporting and misunderstanding that information. We can't really find anyone trustworthy on either side. What do you suggest the agnostics do in that situation?
If the waters are so muddied that agnostics absolutely can not devise a method for determining with any confidence who is right, I advise them to take the conservative approach. In my view, limiting emissions (not a radical restructuring of the global economy... just a few nudges) is the most conservative approach. It's the precautionary principle, yes, but it's the only viable approach to take when the potential risks are so high.
Other than that, I agree that there are a lot of gaps to be filled. I feel "trick" was blown out of proportion and context, and that many of the other perceived holes are simply misrepresented. I'll try to address that later tonight or tomorrow.
I'd be happy to use different terminology if you can accept it. I don't argue that deniers are necessarily irrational, it's just a convenient category in the supporter-agnostic/undecided-denier spectrum. I would normally use "skeptic", but this is a misappropriation. There are many in this category who have come to their conclusion, decided AGW can't possibly be true, and will never change their minds.
Like I said, if you can come up with a better labeling system, I would definitely consider using it. It's harder in English than some other languages, and I haven't figured out a good way to do it.
The last time I checked, when the geocentric model of the universe came under attack, it was the SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY that supported the geocentric model and was lockstep behind that theory of how our universe was organized. It wasn't until people went AGAINST the common scientific consensus that the theory changed, and even then, those that went against the scientific consensus faced massive amounts of animosity and hardship for their viewpoints.
I'm not going to argue the history with you. Instead, I'll just agree that the consensus can be wrong. AGW was the underdog in the beginning, with many people feeling that humanity couldn't possibly compete with nature. As the argument continued, more evidence stacked up in favor of AGW/AGC/whatever you wish to call it, and that became the new consensus.
My point being: science is not and should not ever be done by consensus.
I don't think science should be done by consensus. I'm sorry if I implied that in my post, it was sloppy wording. Policy decisions, however, have to be based largely on consensus. Should we not launch satellites because a few people still feel the earth is flat? Should we allow mercury dumping en masse because a small portion of the population believes "a few ppm can't possibly hurt"? No, we have to make policy in a balanced manner, based on our best available evidence as partially expressed by consensus within the relevant scientific communities.
As for the rest of your post... I'd like to see some serious evidence of this supposed wrongdoing. Few publishers would deny publication simply because they disliked the results. Isn't it more likely that the submitted papers challenging the prevailing theory are deeply flawed? A serious challenge to AGW, pointing out real flaws in the models or any of the interactions would almost certainly be published by the most prestigious journals. It would be one hell of a high-impact paper, and it would be all over the news for a long time to come. Publishers want that. So do scientists.
The question never gets asked: hmm...what incentive would these scientists have in order to so strongly support their viewpoint and try and silence their critics?
No, this question gets asked ad nauseum. The real question is why there is no serious evidence of wrongdoing against so many prominent scientists if they are being dishonest in their work.
Another great question is to ask where these sloppy papers that can't even get published are coming from. Are they scientists whose livings depend on industry money? Do they work for oil companies?
The financial incentives overwhelmingly go the other way. A lot of very powerful industries and lobbies stand to gain significantly if they can disprove AGW. Scientists with a serious chance of dislodging AGW are guaranteed virtually limitless funding from the private sector. Scientists who try to defend or advance AGW have to constantly struggle for grants and scarce public funding.
So you've never met a sceptic who contends, "nobody understands the climate to make these sorts of predictions or scenarios or whatever you want to call them" ??
Sure I have. We may as well call them Climate Agnostics. This position is understandable, but at times problematic. I've heard the same argument from the "teach the controversy" crowd on evolution, and it gives me pause. It's hard to say how much evidence will be required to sway this group. The agnostic approach is only reasonable if the burden of proof required is reasonable.
We all have to rely on experts at some point or other in life. Going to the doctor, calling the plumber, asking the mechanic. We start by assuming they are honest and competent. But we lookout for telltale signs. We always try to lookout for telltale signs. You can generally spot when someone is lying. Their stories become inconsistent, which is interestingly the same thing you notice about sceptics. But the thing is, you have left out the sceptics who say, "the answer to climate is not known". If you claim to have spent time listening to sceptics, why not mention these? So, have I have caught you lying?
Indeed, always lookout for dishonesty, but don't assume it's there every time you perceive one omission or contradiction that may be explainable by other factors.
The problem here is when you start dismissing an entire [scientific] field as nearly entirely composed of liars and scam artists. Not even US politicians are corrupt to the extent climatologists would have to be in order to pull something like this off.
Have you caught me lying? Not at all. I didn't claim to offer an exhaustive list of arguments used by deniers/skeptics. You brought up another common view, and I hope my answer clarifies my take on it and shows why that viewpoint is in danger of becoming unreasonable.
I guess my question for you is, why is it so important to you that the factions be in lockstep and monolithic thinkers?
Speaking for myself, not the GP, but my main complaint is that most of the deniers I've interacted with aren't even in lockstep with themselves. They vacillate between arguing that the planet is cooling, that the planet is warming naturally due to solar cycles, and that the rising temperatures are causing rising CO2. If you point out the flaws in their argument, many will go on to claim that it's all a socialist conspiracy to redistribute wealth, restrict freedom, and get more research money.
My main concern is that the majority of deniers DON'T seem to have a cohesive, intellectually honest argument. Their most outspoken leaders frequently misrepresent both science and politics (ala "Climate Gate").
Not all the "deniers" as you choose to call them believe the same thing. This is pretty standard for any academic field...and what's wrong with that?
Other than my point above, I'll also add that very few of the deniers actually currently do research related to the field. I've seen some very prominent MDs and electrical engineers argue that climate scientists are clueless, but within the field there is very little variance. The vast majority of papers I've seen on the subject say, "Oh, I agree with your methodology and conclusions, but you got this little piece slightly off. You need to reconsider this little piece of your model and make an adjustment of 0.003 here." If anything, the field itself is far less divided than many others.
For instance, nobody at all argues that human industry has not emitted CO2 over the last 200 years... but how much compared to natural sources? Some people argue that point.
All available evidence shows that they are wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence, and all signs point towards the preponderance of CO2 and GHG level increases being caused by human activities.
...and frankly I don't know enough to judge much of any of the science, math, or methodology on the merits.
Hey, now we can agree! Very few people know enough to judge the conclusions of a multidisciplinary area like climate modeling. Those who DO know enough are already working in the field. Even retired climatologists may not be trustworthy sources because they may not be keeping up with modern advances ("The evidence sucked when I retired in 1980, therefore it must be false.").
Knowing this, we usually look at a consensus. Every good survey or report I've ever seen has shown an overwhelming consensus within the field that anthropogenic climate change is real. Every survey/petition/letter I've seen proclaiming the opposite has been flawed by including MDs, EEs, DDSs, and other "sciencey" fields to gather more signatures.
Even ignoring a consensus, the conservative approach is to limit emissions until you know with high confidence that emissions are safe. People are trying to establish a 1% confidence level for AGW when they should really be establishing a 1% confidence level for emissions being safe.
Not only that, but there is absolutely no evidence for the involvement of CO2 in 'it.'
Wrong. There is plenty of evidence, you just disregard it and consider it invalid.
correlation does not imply causation, it implies connection.
Right. Only we have a lot more than correlation.
Let's look at four steps for demonstrating causality:
1. Temporal ordering? Check. CO2 increase came before temperatures started exceeding their normal variance.
2. Correlation? Check. Temperatures continued to increase, as predicted, with minor variation and regression towards the mean, but that mean continually increased with corresponding CO2 (actually, GHG) increases.
3. Causal Mechanism? Check. Radiative forcing is firmly established, as is the physics and other interactions that back this theory up. We have a lot of very solid work in this area, and our observations match our predictions. If anything, our predictions are overly conservative because our assumptions are so conservative.
4. Eliminate Confounding Variables? Check. We've eliminated every other theory/hypothesis to explain temperature rise. We know the current temperature rises are abnormal and differ from previous changes. We know it's not due to solar variation or (heresy) a decrease in pirates. There may be another confounding variable out there, but nobody has found it or made a serious scientific case in its favor.
LOCs are a unit of storage space, and storage space can also be measured on slashdot by vans filled with tape backups traveling down the highway. From there, it's not hard to get to your standard units of furlongs, fortnights, and parsecs.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't disagree that teaching makes professors stronger. But at the same time, we could lower the cost of education while educating far more people if we had more holograms like Alfred Lanning from I, Robot.
You forget the part where quality is also decreased. The vast majority of my professors have been far better than the best khan academy videos. Oddly enough, my most helpful professors were actually the best researchers as well... top names in the field who took the time to interact with students, even in large lecture halls.
Actually, I think this raises a legal question. There's probably enough case law covering this, but how do we handle a cross-border killing? Does Mexico extradite for manslaughter?
Bzzt no thanks for playing. I suggest you take your theory out to your local casino or stock market but make sure you bet a lot of money.
You're either a terrible troll or completely misinformed.
As everyone else has told you, you're completely wrong. There are 46,656 potential combinations for 6 rolls of a 6-sided die. Some of them overlap (e.g. 1/6/6/6/6/6, 6/1/6/6/6/6, 6/6/1/6/6/6, etc.) Of these 46,656, only ONE is 6/6/6/6/6/6. Thus there is a 1/46656 chance of this occurring... it's just as likely as any other combination in this sequence, but most of the other combinations result in the same results thus have a fairly normal probability distribution.
It's one thing to spread science FUD, but really? MATH FUD? This is pretty basic stuff, please don't run around trying to teach people bad math. Here are some pretty graphics explaining dice roll probability distributions to help you out.
It's a load of over-sensitive could-possibly-be-thought-might-happen crap...Most petrol station fires are caused by static sparks from people re-entering their cars while they are fuelling...or just plain carelessness (i.e. smoking on the forecourt).
Actually, I've tried to ignite both gasoline vapor and gasoline with a lit cigarette... it won't happen :(. It was fun to put cigarettes out in a pool of gasoline, though.
As long as you light up away from the pump, and you don't allow the cigarette to light something else (like a few sheets of paper), it seems fairly safe to smoke there.
Not disagreeing with you, just making a slight addition:
However, is the government saying this because it's actually possible to get data off of a single-pass overwritten drive, or does the government merely want everyone else to believe that they can?
I doubt it's part of a misinformation campaign to make people falsely believe they have the capability; that really wouldn't be beneficial. All that matters, however, is that the US Govt. feels such techniques are theoretically possible and that the required technique+technology either is or could potentially be available in the future.
That extremely slight potential risk is more than enough to justify the government take the slight additional expense of destroying discs rather than wiping them.
...However, they also have competition from Fedex and UPS, but I find it interesting how USPS can deliver very lightweight and smaller parcels very cheaply ($5 and less), but they get really expensive as the weight goes up, whereas the other carriers basically have an $8-10 minimum, but as packages get heavier their prices become much better than USPS. Of course, the other carriers also charge you differently based on destination (or the distance of travel), whereas with USPS it's all flat-rate.
I imagine that's based largely on USPS's requirement to go by nearly every address every day, so their marginal increase in fees to deliver a package is minimal. UPS/Fedex, on the other hand, have to travel extra distances, make extra stops, etc. Simple enough economies of scale.
I've no idea why USPS gets so expensive with real heavy packages, but it could be the added difficulty in light of the way they deliver packages. A mailman can carry a few small packages and lots of mail on his person, but large/heavy packages will require extra care for delivery. It's just not their specialty.
"they can contain more data than all the printed texts of the Library of Congress, thousands of times over?"
Your smartphone contains 148,000 terabytes of data?
That thing must be huge! That's what she said!
Can you tell me where you got 148,000 terabytes from your own link? Or any other real estimate of how big the LOC actually is?
Maybe I'm just tired, but I can't seem to find it in that post.
That was the first thing I noticed. There should be some rule that states a minimum percentage of samples before statistical data can be published. A mere 0.001% of Americans would have been a sample of 30,800 rather than 1019 - over 30x as accurate?
And how hard is it to collect polling data these days. The most recent poll on Slashdot, posted yesterday, already has over 7900 votes. The prior poll from five days ago has over 27600 and ten days ago is up to 41300.
Please tell me you were joking. Please?
Keep in mind, the U.S. taxes *income*, not *wealth*. Having a lot of money sitting around isn't criminal. Only not paying tax *when you acquire it* could be criminal.
While true, I imagine someone who reported $200k/year income for the last 20 years would have to explain a $50m bank account. Even "wise investing" or "gambling" gains would have to have been reported at some point.
Hey, we're still the leading exporter of incoherent rants! USA! USA!
GP was suggesting that 30 vaccines a day is commonplace. I'm asking for any proof for his/her claims.
Simple.
I'm not at all agreeing with the AC, but the military tends to give a whole ton of vaccines at once in basic training. Not 30, but it's still very densely packed.
I think it depends a lot on the subject. I can't imagine using a laptop in chemistry, but I don't know how students in the social sciences get by without one! Many professors provide lectures that are far more informative than the texts, and some of them test primarily from the lecture notes.
Some of us just take far better notes in electronic form... it's easier to outline, move things around, search/reference later, etc.
Does a degree pay off AT ALL anymore?
Only honest answer: it depends, and... sometimes.
It depends on your field, your level of education, and loads of other factors.
Does a BA in Psychology pay off? Not unless you get the PhD or PsyD to go with it (otherwise you can expect decreased earnings potential). Does a BS in EE pay off? Yeah, at least it used to.
If your degree will allow you to work in one of the professional fields, or will lead to a higher degree with a decent chance of employment, then yes, the degree will probably pay off. If you're going to work in a low salary field, or one where experience means more than a degree, there's a good chance you're wasting your money.
As you pointed out, the study is irrelevant for scoring Fox News. Fox's most popular misinformative shows are its "commentary" shows: Beck, O'Riley, etc. Per the methodology of the study you cited, these shows were not included. Fox's actual news service is fairly unbiased, but "Fox News" really refers to its dominant commentary shows, which are highly, highly biased. You can't say "Krispy Kreme is just as healthy as Subway if you compare only their drink selections".
On top of the limitations of the study's methodology, and some other issues (I think their study is quite flawed), I'd argue another significant problem: Congressmen aren't necessarily representative of the population. I think you'll find that old, white, wealthy Christians tend to be more conservative than average, controlling for political affiliation. That destroys their defined center:
As a comparison, 50.06 is our estimate of the average American voter. This is based upon taking average scores of House members and senators after adding
phantom (extreme liberal) D.C. House members and senators and weighting Senate scores by the population of the state.
That's the problem with their scale... there's no way to measure the average voter on the same scale, so they just went ahead and defined an arbitrary average, which I would expect to be a highly skewed number.
By contrast, they have Lieberman on there as ~75. You really think LIEBERMAN is halfway to the extreme left from center? Seriously? That's a flawed scale. I imagine Lieberman is fairly close to center... most progressives think he's far too conservative, most conservatives think he's far too liberal, and he's usually willing to side with either party as long as they make a few concessions to him.
Readjusting the scale with Liberman as the center puts Fox in a race with the Washington Times for furthest from center, and places the majority of other media outlets as center-right... about what most political scientists would expect.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical to say this, but Russia seems to love nothing better than undermining U.S. power. I doubt they'd take the initiative to set back Iran's nuclear program like that.
No, that's not cynical, it's just a bit off. Russia loves undermining US power, plenty of evidence of that, and the associated back and forth, ever since Brest-Litovsk.
The point is that Russia doesn't want to see Iran actually acquire nuclear weapons. That's some bad juju for everyone, including Russia. Russia wants the US to expend considerable effort and resources trying to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and they want to keep Iran there as an anti-West nation, but they do want the US to succeed in this objective.
He actually has a point, it's just a bit poorly worded.
The US uses single-member plurality districts, and that means, by definition, the representatives are selected only one per majority for each district. All citizens are indeed represented by their congressmen, but that does not mean the congressmen represent the views of all members of their districts.
I love to look at extremes to illustrate points, so let's use child molesters, as an example. Surely some convicted of the crime feel that it should be legal, but, I [believe, there isn't a single congressman on the record suggesting such. It's an extreme minority viewpoint and one unlikely to be represented in Congress during our lifetimes. I'm not saying it SHOULD be, just that it's not.
Do you have a better suggestion?
I do! Proportional representation, particularly of the German variety. Citizens get two votes, ballot has two sides. On one side, you select the party you wish to vote for. On the other, you select the candidates you wish to vote for. Votes are divvied up by various rules, but basically the top candidates go straight to Congress (parliament, bundestag, whatever), and the other seats are filled by %s matching parties.
Most nations have a lower limit (think significance) for these systems. 5% is pretty common, so parties with under 5% of the vote don't usually get represented. Overall, it's a more equitable way to divy up the legislature. It allows significant minority parties to gain representation and forces the legislative body to consider them when passing legislation.
With a system like this in the US, I imagine we'd have splits in both major parties. From left to right, Dems would split into Social Democrats and some sort of business/conservative/Christian Democrats, and Republicans would split into oldschool conservative, Tea Party, and perhaps a religious right party. Green Party would take some of the Social Democrats and get over 10% of the electorate, probably incorporating a lot of youth and historic non-voters.
No one party would ever have a controlling majority again, but compromise on major issues would be achievable... and we'd have a legislature that would be more representative of the population.
I'm sure they've been transferred as a result of other court proceedings. It's gotta be among assets awarded as damages somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if domain names came up in divorces, bankruptcies, etc.
I'll address your "real point" first, and then get to as many others as I have time for.
The real reason for my reply is simply to tell you, in reality, causation is determined in science using experiemnts. Not by making a list of four criteria each packed out with alarmist talking points.
No, causality requires these four in experiments as well. Lab experiments just make it easier to control these factors. Pretend you're testing toxicity of a compound. Does temporal ordering become irrelevant in a lab? Do you no longer need correlation? A causal mechanism? Are confounding variables now allowed?
No. Lab experiments make these things easier to deal with, and make it easier to rule out confounding variables, but it's still an issue. Think of the early false positive for cold fusion... which, IIRC, turned out to be due to a confounding variable: stirring the solution imparted energy on it which warmed it.
BasilBrush already pointed out that some of your claims are false. There are far more than one data point and one line of evidence.
Every portion I can think of has multiple lines of evidence and proxies all pointing the same direction. The few potential issues, like tree rings, have well-understood problems.
Your forcing mechanisms are just theories, as yet unproved. Your opinion about whether you are being conservative are interesting but they don't add any credibility.
Theories don't graduate to "proven" status. The best a theory can hope for is to become an accepted theory. Evolution is at that point. So is germ theory... and so is radiative forcing. If anything, radiative forcing is more an observation than a theory, but the underlying theories behind AGW are quite sound.
So your answer to "Eliminate Confounding Variables" is to say it's somebody else's problem to find them?
No, my answer to "eliminate confounding variables" is to eliminate every confounding variable everyone has seriously proposed over a series of decades in which the majority were trying quite hard to discredit it. We're all out of contenders, and people stopped seriously trying to challenge it directly on this level long ago.
Is it possible there still some confounding variable that would shatter the theory? Sure. But it's not very likely. Both sides have tried very hard to find one (I didn't say only the deniers were looking for them, scientists aren't as stupid as you seem to think), and we've ruled out everything we think might be related.
There are almost certainly some minor errors. As has been pointed out elsewhere, all of the models have wide margins of error to try to account for this. As I said earlier, nearly all of the models attempt to make their assumptions and errors on the conservative side
I owe you a better and longer reply, but I'm pressed for time today and wanted to respond to your last point real quick.
At this point, as you implied, agnostics are looking for a nearly impossible level of proof. Unfortunately, that is a justified stance, because both sides are so full of liars, politicians, corporations, and media mis-reporting and misunderstanding that information. We can't really find anyone trustworthy on either side. What do you suggest the agnostics do in that situation?
If the waters are so muddied that agnostics absolutely can not devise a method for determining with any confidence who is right, I advise them to take the conservative approach. In my view, limiting emissions (not a radical restructuring of the global economy... just a few nudges) is the most conservative approach. It's the precautionary principle, yes, but it's the only viable approach to take when the potential risks are so high.
Other than that, I agree that there are a lot of gaps to be filled. I feel "trick" was blown out of proportion and context, and that many of the other perceived holes are simply misrepresented. I'll try to address that later tonight or tomorrow.
I'd be happy to use different terminology if you can accept it. I don't argue that deniers are necessarily irrational, it's just a convenient category in the supporter-agnostic/undecided-denier spectrum. I would normally use "skeptic", but this is a misappropriation. There are many in this category who have come to their conclusion, decided AGW can't possibly be true, and will never change their minds.
Like I said, if you can come up with a better labeling system, I would definitely consider using it. It's harder in English than some other languages, and I haven't figured out a good way to do it.
The last time I checked, when the geocentric model of the universe came under attack, it was the SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY that supported the geocentric model and was lockstep behind that theory of how our universe was organized. It wasn't until people went AGAINST the common scientific consensus that the theory changed, and even then, those that went against the scientific consensus faced massive amounts of animosity and hardship for their viewpoints.
I'm not going to argue the history with you. Instead, I'll just agree that the consensus can be wrong. AGW was the underdog in the beginning, with many people feeling that humanity couldn't possibly compete with nature. As the argument continued, more evidence stacked up in favor of AGW/AGC/whatever you wish to call it, and that became the new consensus.
My point being: science is not and should not ever be done by consensus.
I don't think science should be done by consensus. I'm sorry if I implied that in my post, it was sloppy wording. Policy decisions, however, have to be based largely on consensus. Should we not launch satellites because a few people still feel the earth is flat? Should we allow mercury dumping en masse because a small portion of the population believes "a few ppm can't possibly hurt"? No, we have to make policy in a balanced manner, based on our best available evidence as partially expressed by consensus within the relevant scientific communities.
As for the rest of your post... I'd like to see some serious evidence of this supposed wrongdoing. Few publishers would deny publication simply because they disliked the results. Isn't it more likely that the submitted papers challenging the prevailing theory are deeply flawed? A serious challenge to AGW, pointing out real flaws in the models or any of the interactions would almost certainly be published by the most prestigious journals. It would be one hell of a high-impact paper, and it would be all over the news for a long time to come. Publishers want that. So do scientists.
The question never gets asked: hmm...what incentive would these scientists have in order to so strongly support their viewpoint and try and silence their critics?
No, this question gets asked ad nauseum. The real question is why there is no serious evidence of wrongdoing against so many prominent scientists if they are being dishonest in their work.
Another great question is to ask where these sloppy papers that can't even get published are coming from. Are they scientists whose livings depend on industry money? Do they work for oil companies?
The financial incentives overwhelmingly go the other way. A lot of very powerful industries and lobbies stand to gain significantly if they can disprove AGW. Scientists with a serious chance of dislodging AGW are guaranteed virtually limitless funding from the private sector. Scientists who try to defend or advance AGW have to constantly struggle for grants and scarce public funding.
So you've never met a sceptic who contends, "nobody understands the climate to make these sorts of predictions or scenarios or whatever you want to call them" ??
Sure I have. We may as well call them Climate Agnostics. This position is understandable, but at times problematic. I've heard the same argument from the "teach the controversy" crowd on evolution, and it gives me pause. It's hard to say how much evidence will be required to sway this group. The agnostic approach is only reasonable if the burden of proof required is reasonable.
We all have to rely on experts at some point or other in life. Going to the doctor, calling the plumber, asking the mechanic. We start by assuming they are honest and competent. But we lookout for telltale signs. We always try to lookout for telltale signs. You can generally spot when someone is lying. Their stories become inconsistent, which is interestingly the same thing you notice about sceptics. But the thing is, you have left out the sceptics who say, "the answer to climate is not known". If you claim to have spent time listening to sceptics, why not mention these? So, have I have caught you lying?
Indeed, always lookout for dishonesty, but don't assume it's there every time you perceive one omission or contradiction that may be explainable by other factors.
The problem here is when you start dismissing an entire [scientific] field as nearly entirely composed of liars and scam artists. Not even US politicians are corrupt to the extent climatologists would have to be in order to pull something like this off.
Have you caught me lying? Not at all. I didn't claim to offer an exhaustive list of arguments used by deniers/skeptics. You brought up another common view, and I hope my answer clarifies my take on it and shows why that viewpoint is in danger of becoming unreasonable.
I guess my question for you is, why is it so important to you that the factions be in lockstep and monolithic thinkers?
Speaking for myself, not the GP, but my main complaint is that most of the deniers I've interacted with aren't even in lockstep with themselves. They vacillate between arguing that the planet is cooling, that the planet is warming naturally due to solar cycles, and that the rising temperatures are causing rising CO2. If you point out the flaws in their argument, many will go on to claim that it's all a socialist conspiracy to redistribute wealth, restrict freedom, and get more research money.
My main concern is that the majority of deniers DON'T seem to have a cohesive, intellectually honest argument. Their most outspoken leaders frequently misrepresent both science and politics (ala "Climate Gate").
Not all the "deniers" as you choose to call them believe the same thing. This is pretty standard for any academic field...and what's wrong with that?
Other than my point above, I'll also add that very few of the deniers actually currently do research related to the field. I've seen some very prominent MDs and electrical engineers argue that climate scientists are clueless, but within the field there is very little variance. The vast majority of papers I've seen on the subject say, "Oh, I agree with your methodology and conclusions, but you got this little piece slightly off. You need to reconsider this little piece of your model and make an adjustment of 0.003 here." If anything, the field itself is far less divided than many others.
For instance, nobody at all argues that human industry has not emitted CO2 over the last 200 years... but how much compared to natural sources? Some people argue that point.
All available evidence shows that they are wrong. We have multiple lines of evidence, and all signs point towards the preponderance of CO2 and GHG level increases being caused by human activities.
...and frankly I don't know enough to judge much of any of the science, math, or methodology on the merits.
Hey, now we can agree! Very few people know enough to judge the conclusions of a multidisciplinary area like climate modeling. Those who DO know enough are already working in the field. Even retired climatologists may not be trustworthy sources because they may not be keeping up with modern advances ("The evidence sucked when I retired in 1980, therefore it must be false.").
Knowing this, we usually look at a consensus. Every good survey or report I've ever seen has shown an overwhelming consensus within the field that anthropogenic climate change is real. Every survey/petition/letter I've seen proclaiming the opposite has been flawed by including MDs, EEs, DDSs, and other "sciencey" fields to gather more signatures.
Even ignoring a consensus, the conservative approach is to limit emissions until you know with high confidence that emissions are safe. People are trying to establish a 1% confidence level for AGW when they should really be establishing a 1% confidence level for emissions being safe.
Not only that, but there is absolutely no evidence for the involvement of CO2 in 'it.'
Wrong. There is plenty of evidence, you just disregard it and consider it invalid.
correlation does not imply causation, it implies connection.
Right. Only we have a lot more than correlation.
Let's look at four steps for demonstrating causality:
1. Temporal ordering? Check. CO2 increase came before temperatures started exceeding their normal variance.
2. Correlation? Check. Temperatures continued to increase, as predicted, with minor variation and regression towards the mean, but that mean continually increased with corresponding CO2 (actually, GHG) increases.
3. Causal Mechanism? Check. Radiative forcing is firmly established, as is the physics and other interactions that back this theory up. We have a lot of very solid work in this area, and our observations match our predictions. If anything, our predictions are overly conservative because our assumptions are so conservative.
4. Eliminate Confounding Variables? Check. We've eliminated every other theory/hypothesis to explain temperature rise. We know the current temperature rises are abnormal and differ from previous changes. We know it's not due to solar variation or (heresy) a decrease in pirates. There may be another confounding variable out there, but nobody has found it or made a serious scientific case in its favor.
You have to do some dimensional analysis.
LOCs are a unit of storage space, and storage space can also be measured on slashdot by vans filled with tape backups traveling down the highway. From there, it's not hard to get to your standard units of furlongs, fortnights, and parsecs.