>>I think that Google might well restore the app if a counter-claim was filed.
Yeah, you'd think. But based on my experience with Youtube (i.e. Google), they just ignore counter-claims and roll over and expose their stomachs to anything the big media companies want, even if you have the rights to a particular video and list that in the counterclaim.
Similar to my life. I got into a lot of fights in elementary school. I was the biggest and strongest kid in the school, so they'd try to wolfpack attack me. So I'd just pick one of the kids and grapple with him. Wouldn't punch anyone - I still don't like hurting people, but using an aggresor as a body shield while kids throw dodgeballs at me was quite satisfying.
Then I went to a school in the ghetto where you could feasibly get shot (my science teacher WAS shot, and retired) for getting into a fight. So I didn't get into any more fights. Peace through superior firepower, no?
Actually, I got into a fight the last day of middle school, since I knew they wouldn't be able to retaliate against me the next day.
Honestly, I think you're agreeing with me. If you weren't prepared to fight, the angry guy in both of your situations could have seriously hurt you. Just as such, if a country doesn't have a military, it will probably get beaten up by the first bully around town. Maybe people in the EU have forgotten what human history has been like, but most of it has not been like the last 50 years, and the reason we haven't had any major wars in 50 years (sorry, Vietnam and Iraq are small-scale) is because of superior firepower in the form of nuclear weapons.
>>No we don't. We hold ourselves morally superior to the corrupt power-mad politicians who gave the orders... >>Now THAT is moral bravery.
That's great. It's totally wonderful that you hold yourself superior to a tyrant as his panzers roll down the main street of Amsterdam. All those Jewish families who will be annihilated in the next four years in his death camps will THANK YOU for your "bravery" in taking the high ground here.
I agree with you it's not just to fight in a war just to conquer another country, but it's (usually) just to defend your homeland from invasion. And if you're a hippie pacifist that refuses to pick up a gun until the last second, your country is probably going to be conquered.
I mean, sure, living in the Netherlands, I can see how there's maybe not much point to being in the military since Germany can essentially roll over you in three seconds, so maybe there's a difference in perspective there, but if the USSR invaded Europe, and all of your fellow EU-ers took up arms against the Red Army, would you sit back at home and enjoy the benefits of all your fellow men dying for your freedom? That's the point Heinlein was making. Pacifists are willing to let other people die for them, but offer nothing in return. It's a sad philosophy.
>>I don't respect soldiers. I pity them. I pity the fool who would voluntarily give up his power to choose about his own actions. Who would voluntarily let his free will be drilled out. Who would consent to bootcamp brainwashing so he could look at whoever his government doesn't like and just shut down the part of his brain that knows they are human.
Eh, I don't think you really understand how the military works. That's vaguely how the marines are, I guess, but I was in the Air Force for a while, and it was nothing like this awfully silly categorization of yours. I've sent this on to Army friends of mine, who thought it was awfully funny, too.
Look - I think you and I actually agree on the core principles. Case in point - I train martial arts, and have done so for 14 or 15 years now. Last Sunday night, I was attacked by a naked guy in my apartment complex. He was obviously drunk, and was a violent drunk, but my main concern was for HIM. He was lying passed out on the ground, in his underwear, in a pool of urine, when I found him shivering at 2AM. After I asked him if he was all right, he attacked me, threw his urine-soaked underwear on my car, and kept attacking me. I could have easily beat the shit out of him if I wanted, but I was concerned that the guy was going to die from exposure, so I kept asking him if he was all right, and to go back into his house, wherever it was.
If I hadn't done martial arts, the guy could have seriously hurt me as he kept trying to tackle me, and punching at my face. Because I was prepared, not only did he not touch me, but I got him back inside where the guy wouldn't die from the cold.
Now think about the parallel between that and serving in the military, and still tell me that pacifism is a morally superior philosophy.
>>but won't this "activation" business complicate reinstallation onto new OS/computer? And what about the lack of LAN play?
It's amazing that Blizzard is touting only "a single online activation" for a game that can be played in offline mode, as if this was a good thing.
I mean, sure, it's better than needing a constant net connection, but needing a net connection to activate a single player game is still like getting poked in the eye by a stick.
>>I've seen HP mono laser printers go for $150. Newegg's got a Brother mono laser for $70 + $2 shipping right now.
My small business has been using Samsung ML-1740s for years now. You can get one nowadays for about $65. As someone who was used to inkjets, I bought a spare toner cartridge for it because I got a gut feeling it was running low and would need replacement soon. That was two years ago. The spare toner cartridge is still sitting in my closet.
To reiterate what the GP said - laser printers are a LOT more economical to do lots of printing with. I have a color inkjet printer/scanner/fax for those occasional color needs, but running all my B&W printing through a laser printer has saved me hundreds of dollars in ink every year.
In other words, several studies have already examined the more important issue of site characteristic change over time and found that current adjustments are valid. The patient records of thousands of anonymous scientists over decades are actually more useful in a climate change context than an exhaustive snapshot of the network as it stands today.
Sure. I read the paper.
Actually, it was interesting to read in large part in terms of the numbers of way faults can occur in the station data. Given the rather hackish heuristics used to detect faults, it actually lowered my confidence in the quality of station data.
When you conduct science, you try to eliminate confounding factors until you're left with just your one experimental value. In this case: temperature over time. Given the number of error sources listed in just this paper alone, along with the fact that half the changes went undocumented, it would make me even more dubious of the temperature record without having empirical data to verify it. That's why I've said the satellite data makes the issue moot moving forward; unless something goes tragically wrong the environment around a satellite won't be exposed to any of the confounding factors that impact surface station data.
To go back to my original point, somebody needed to get out there and do the legwork that Watts did, and provide empirical confirmation. You might not like the fact that he's a crackpot, but you (and RC.org) show a very disappointing trend seen quite commonly in climate scientists, that they dismiss anything that comes out of someone that disagrees with them, even if their contribution is valuable. The Menne 2009 paper refreshingly takes the opposite approach even while reinforcing your point that the longitudinal data is much more important. It even cited Pielke as a source of criticisms about the temperature record.
When I said back in my first post in this long thread that RC.org was on the bullshit end of the surface station data, this was precisely the point: empirical data trumps statistical filtering (especially with something so complex). Dismissing a source of empirical confirmation data, because you don't like the guy's political views, is the bullshit end of the argument.
Or to paraphrase Phil Jones: Why should I make my data available, when critics might use it disprove my work?
Saying that appeal to authority is a fallacy is a fallacy.
But nothing fails more than confusing Elron and Heinlein. =) =) =)
Heinlein's point is a valid one - pacifists benefit from the sacrifice of thousands or millions of dead veterans, who died for their freedom, but somehow hold themselves to be morally superior to these guys who often paid the ultimate sacrifice.
>>Yet again, it's the "everyone else was ignoring" clause that I'm disagreeing with. Watts isn't the first person to repeatedly survey [noaa.gov] stations in person
From the paper that you just cited at me as "Watts wasn't the first person to survey stations in person":
"A number of recent articles have also raised concerns about the site characteristics of U.S. HCN stations by way of photographic documentation (e.g., Davey ahnd Pielke 2005; Pielke et al. 2007a,b). Moreover, there is evidence that a large fraction of HCN sites have poor ratings with respect to the site classification criteria used by the U.S. Climate Reference Network (A. Watts 2008 personal communication; refer also to www.surfacestations.org1). In at least one study (i.e., Mahmood et al. 2006), photographic documentation and other sources of information regarding the exposure characteristics of COOP and HCN sites were used to link poor siting with measurement bias. Such evidence raises legitimate questions about the representativeness of temperature measurements from a number of U.S. HCN sites. However, from a climate change perspective, the primary concern is not so much the absolute measurement bias of a particular site but rather the changes in that bias over time, which the TOB and pairwise adjustments effectively address (Vose et al. 2003; Menne and Williams 2009). The goal of the HCN version 2 adjustments (and homogenization in general) is not to ensure that observations conform to an absolute standard but rather to remove the effect of relative bias changes that occur during a station's history of observation. In this regard, photographic documentation, though valuable, is most valuable when it is used to document the timing and causes of such shifts in bias through time. Ultimately, the magnitude of relative changes in the bias of observations, whatever the source, cannot be inferred from the metadata. Instead, the effect of station changes and nonstandard instrument exposure on temperature trends must be determined via a systematic evaluation of the observations themselves (Peterson 2006), generally through relative comparisons. Such an analysis suggests that the effect of undocumented changes appears to be at least as significant as documented changes in the HCN and that homogeneity testing for both types of shifts is critical."
Again, you're having trouble with the thesis statement thing, though I appreciate the various links to read.
Economics is actually the closest parallel to climate science, as applied mathematics is very close to some parts of computer science (and other fields with other parts).
If you think the consensus that climate science isn't science by the philosophy crowd bothers you, you ought to wonder why. I'm perfectly well aware that people in the field have adopted the title of scientists for themselves, in order to achieve a patina of respectability, but everyone has been doing that these days. Even philosophy has tried to adopt the patina of science for itself since the early 20th Century.
I'm not of the camp that it's not science (well, depending on my mood), but it certainly doesn't meet all the criteria of a real science, either. That's why I think we really should have a third category beyond arts and sciences for the semi-scientific schools of inquiry, like climate science and economics.
>>I realize that you think that "I don't fucking know what I'm talking about" but I'm curious as to what you think qualifies someone to be a physicist?
I was just annoyed that you called me a non-physicist. I let it pass once with your rather insulting Salem Hypothesis thing, but I don't let things go twice. To re-iterate what I said before, you don't know what you're talking about when you're trying to insult me like that.
If you label me a non-physicist, then I'll have to start calling you a weather man.
>>Again, you're not the first person to change the topic from "how many independent empirical data sources have been shown to be consistent with dynamical climate model ensembles" to something like "Is justified true belief knowledge?".
As I expected, you missed the point. It was amusing that you linked a pdf from the department I took classes from, though.
>>strengthened their argument that their statistical methods are valid.
This is the key takeaway point here. Confirmation of something can often be as valuable as evidence that disproves a hypothesis.
He did legwork that nobody else did; it is entirely possible he could have found that they'd overlooked something in their purely statistical methods, and it's possible that he did, but the errors he found fell well within the fairly generous error ranges of the measurement data.
>>You are demonstrably a second class citizen, and you have it thrust in your face every day.
Thrust in your face? By whom? I think you're confusing explicit vs. implicit racism... if that's even the right word - I think culture is a far better way of describing it. Otherwise you get into problems by defining people like the Black Panthers to be racists against black people. And maybe you would make that claim, I'm not sure.
I actually think we're agreeing here, just using different terms. The real challenge is overcoming the expectations against success. Once you do that, the kids see all the opportunities that they have out there, and tend to do quite well. But all the scholarships in the world won't make more black kids go into CS if they themselves are not interested in it, for whatever reason.
>>I'm tired of the repetitive nature of my conversations with non-physicists.
If you can't engage in proper argumentation, then you're really not helping. An argument takes the form of a thesis statement, and supporting statements and references. When the references you cite support my point, and you don't make a thesis statement, you're accomplishing less than nothing.
The Watts research is case in point. He went out and did legwork that everyone else was ignoring. Unless you're actually claiming it's better off not knowing the quality of surface stations, he made a contribution. But the papers you reference, and your own statements on here, show your amazing reluctance to ever grant a single scrap of credit to the guy. I actually agree with you that he's a nutjob, but these... blinders... that climate scientists put on really does away with a lot of the aura the field so desperately tries to craft around itself.
To use your own words, it's like a modified Salem Hypothesis that lets non-physicists like climate scientists think that their hand-waving is a legitimate form of argumentation, whereas everyone else is an anti-scientific nutjob. It probably comes from their field being only tenuously considered a science. Yes, yes, I've read http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/is-climate-modelling-science/, and as someone who as actually studied the philosophy of science, in graduate school... RC.org is wrong, again. Climate science is closer in practice to economics than any other field. So either economics is a science, or climate science isn't, or you have to put some sort of nebulous grey area together for fields that make observations and construct hypothesis for predictions, but can't run controlled experiments and have problems with falsifiability.
>>Claiming that 90% of the stations are compromised would require showing that the previously documented empirical evidence hadn't corrected for the bias
You're not familiar with the Gettier paradox then. I'm tempted here to just quote a bunch of papers on it to show you why you're wrong, without ever saying why, just to show you why your method of argumentation is so poor. But I'll just leave it up to you to research it and figure out for yourself why this claim is fallacious.
>>It's useless to debate with somebody who genuinely believes that killing other people for wearing the wrong flag on their uniforms can ever be okay.
And it's useless to debate someone who would throw down his weapons and run when the Germans rolled across his border.
Violence should never be a first option, but it always needs to be an option for dealing with evil, or evil will win. It's as simple as that.
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty. - Robert Heinlein
>>I studied history as well as an extra major - and you're just plain wrong. Nobody can be free of bias, it's a basic fact of human mental development, one of those biasses is our moral view - you cannot, EVER switch it off. So yes, impossible.
I'm talking about judging characters in the past using the context of our modern times. This you CAN do, and I work in US History these days, and work with a lot of historians, and they all agree on this point.
For example, consider that you (probably) think that hanging someone is wrong. There's this historical character X, who is an amazing guy, a paragon of virtue, and he also cleaned up his area by hanging a lot of people. You'd claim this guy was scum?
>>If we do that, then Vikings raping and pillaging cannot be judged against because it was NOBLE in THEIR morality ?
"God, save us from the Vikings" mean anything to you? I'm talking about the context of the time, not their individual morality.
>>Yes, Christians weren't expansionist at all...
I didn't say they weren't expansionist. I think it's a mistake to equate the 1000 year history of Muslim expansionism, conquest, and conversion by the sword with anything the Christians did, including the Crusades (which were the biggest Christian effort that could be labeled this way).
Probably the closest analogy you could find in Chrisendom would be the various Khanates, but they were definitely not expanding to spread Christianity.
And again, your entire rant about individuals and soldiers being haunted has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Christian doctrine regarding war. I'd summarize, but it's probably better for you to just read the official policy for yourself: http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=12206
In a nutshell, it is a moral evil to be an ultimate pacifist, and there's no justification in the Bible to be that way. There's a really serious difference between a love for peace, and refusing to stop a rapist from attacking your daughter.
No, you haven't. Answering a question involves writing a thesis statement. References are not an acceptable substitute for a thesis statement. The Menne quote you've given twice before accepts his classification of surface stations as "good" and "bad", and you've now accepted #1.
>>I've just been saying that his "research" isn't original, ignores many previous studies, and didn't uncover the UHI problems that Watts was clearly expecting (which does refute argument #2).
My entire point is that empirical studies trump statistical filtering. The GISS data for example, does some of its UHI filtering by comparing temperature spikes between an urban station and a rural station. How do they know which is which? They look at them on a map. This is what I called bullshit on - if the rural station has had asphalt put around it, and now has an AC exhaust blowing right on top of it, they have no way of knowing except by doing the legwork that Watts did. Claiming that stats can fix everything when 90% of stations are compromised is nonsense. I know they do a lot of clever tricks (checking for temperature dips on windy days for example), but I'm not happy with any substitute except satellite data (validating via another empirical source).
>>And? Maybe he wasn't talking about grind in MMO scales but in what he can stomach? I know I can't be arsed to bash mobs over and over again to gain a level or the 50 thingamajigs needed for some joke of a quest.
Precisely. I hate running around killing the same monster over and over again.
This is the very definition of tedium in a MMORPG for me, and Aion was full of it.
>>It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid
Not true. And... not true. It's a newb mistake to judge the distant past by modern morality.
>>That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time
The equation of Islamic and Christian worlds/expansionism is one of the fundamental mistakes that people make these days; this is exactly what I'm talking about.
>>Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"
Demonstrating your complete ignorance of Christian doctrine. Christians are supposed to stand up to evil, and having people raiding your countries, kidnapping small boys, emasculating them, and sending them back at you as super soldiers IS evil.
>>Sometimes they are also unavoidable, when the enemy soldier is marching down your streets, you HAVE to fight back - but even THEN it's still murder when you shoot him.
No, it's not murder. Again, demonstrating your complete ignorance. The Christian ethos is a lot more common sense than what you are pretending that it is.
>>No, you haven't been talking only about issue #1. You were clearly implying that Watts has uncovered issues that Real Climate is "bullshitting" about. I've been trying to stress that this isn't true.
I have been. You've been failing to understand this.
Empirical research trumps statistical filtering. Go back and read what I said.
>>You know what? Forget it. This is too repetitive for me to bother. Have a nice day.
It's a shame... yet another pro-AGW person that has a complete mental block to ever admit that someone in the anti-AGW camp might be right about something.
It's a very simple question: is his surface station data accurate or not? Why can't you answer this question??
I'm too tired to provide a car analogy, but what the EPA pulled is the equivalent of the state department claiming it can regulate all industry because industry produces CO2, CO2 causes global warming, global warming is against American interests, and therefore treasonous.
The endangerment clause was designed for pollutants which harm humans, i.e. poisons, fucktard, not a nebulous connection like it has. Unfortunately the supreme court opened the doors on this a couple years back, so it looks legal.
Yet again, you are missing the point. There's two related issues here: 1) his assessment of surface station quality and 2) differences, if any, between his collection of stations and the national average. I've been only talking about 1), which you keep ignoring in order to talk about 2.
Hell, the quote above you give seems to accept his rankings of surface stations. This is what I mean as a validation of his work. I'm utterly uninterested in his conclusions or lack thereof from his subset of stations (ie 2), only if you or others think his assessment of stations is accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
>>I think that Google might well restore the app if a counter-claim was filed.
Yeah, you'd think. But based on my experience with Youtube (i.e. Google), they just ignore counter-claims and roll over and expose their stomachs to anything the big media companies want, even if you have the rights to a particular video and list that in the counterclaim.
>>The process is "complain to the host. host notifies the client. host removes content. client counter-claims. host restores content."
You're right about the process, except for the last step.
Similar to my life. I got into a lot of fights in elementary school. I was the biggest and strongest kid in the school, so they'd try to wolfpack attack me. So I'd just pick one of the kids and grapple with him. Wouldn't punch anyone - I still don't like hurting people, but using an aggresor as a body shield while kids throw dodgeballs at me was quite satisfying.
Then I went to a school in the ghetto where you could feasibly get shot (my science teacher WAS shot, and retired) for getting into a fight. So I didn't get into any more fights. Peace through superior firepower, no?
Actually, I got into a fight the last day of middle school, since I knew they wouldn't be able to retaliate against me the next day.
Honestly, I think you're agreeing with me. If you weren't prepared to fight, the angry guy in both of your situations could have seriously hurt you. Just as such, if a country doesn't have a military, it will probably get beaten up by the first bully around town. Maybe people in the EU have forgotten what human history has been like, but most of it has not been like the last 50 years, and the reason we haven't had any major wars in 50 years (sorry, Vietnam and Iraq are small-scale) is because of superior firepower in the form of nuclear weapons.
Si vis pacem, para bellum, and all that.
>>No we don't. We hold ourselves morally superior to the corrupt power-mad politicians who gave the orders. ..
>>Now THAT is moral bravery.
That's great. It's totally wonderful that you hold yourself superior to a tyrant as his panzers roll down the main street of Amsterdam. All those Jewish families who will be annihilated in the next four years in his death camps will THANK YOU for your "bravery" in taking the high ground here.
I agree with you it's not just to fight in a war just to conquer another country, but it's (usually) just to defend your homeland from invasion. And if you're a hippie pacifist that refuses to pick up a gun until the last second, your country is probably going to be conquered.
I mean, sure, living in the Netherlands, I can see how there's maybe not much point to being in the military since Germany can essentially roll over you in three seconds, so maybe there's a difference in perspective there, but if the USSR invaded Europe, and all of your fellow EU-ers took up arms against the Red Army, would you sit back at home and enjoy the benefits of all your fellow men dying for your freedom? That's the point Heinlein was making. Pacifists are willing to let other people die for them, but offer nothing in return. It's a sad philosophy.
>>I don't respect soldiers. I pity them. I pity the fool who would voluntarily give up his power to choose about his own actions. Who would voluntarily let his free will be drilled out. Who would consent to bootcamp brainwashing so he could look at whoever his government doesn't like and just shut down the part of his brain that knows they are human.
Eh, I don't think you really understand how the military works. That's vaguely how the marines are, I guess, but I was in the Air Force for a while, and it was nothing like this awfully silly categorization of yours. I've sent this on to Army friends of mine, who thought it was awfully funny, too.
Look - I think you and I actually agree on the core principles. Case in point - I train martial arts, and have done so for 14 or 15 years now. Last Sunday night, I was attacked by a naked guy in my apartment complex. He was obviously drunk, and was a violent drunk, but my main concern was for HIM. He was lying passed out on the ground, in his underwear, in a pool of urine, when I found him shivering at 2AM. After I asked him if he was all right, he attacked me, threw his urine-soaked underwear on my car, and kept attacking me. I could have easily beat the shit out of him if I wanted, but I was concerned that the guy was going to die from exposure, so I kept asking him if he was all right, and to go back into his house, wherever it was.
If I hadn't done martial arts, the guy could have seriously hurt me as he kept trying to tackle me, and punching at my face. Because I was prepared, not only did he not touch me, but I got him back inside where the guy wouldn't die from the cold.
Now think about the parallel between that and serving in the military, and still tell me that pacifism is a morally superior philosophy.
>>but won't this "activation" business complicate reinstallation onto new OS/computer? And what about the lack of LAN play?
It's amazing that Blizzard is touting only "a single online activation" for a game that can be played in offline mode, as if this was a good thing.
I mean, sure, it's better than needing a constant net connection, but needing a net connection to activate a single player game is still like getting poked in the eye by a stick.
>>I've seen HP mono laser printers go for $150. Newegg's got a Brother mono laser for $70 + $2 shipping right now.
My small business has been using Samsung ML-1740s for years now. You can get one nowadays for about $65. As someone who was used to inkjets, I bought a spare toner cartridge for it because I got a gut feeling it was running low and would need replacement soon. That was two years ago. The spare toner cartridge is still sitting in my closet.
To reiterate what the GP said - laser printers are a LOT more economical to do lots of printing with. I have a color inkjet printer/scanner/fax for those occasional color needs, but running all my B&W printing through a laser printer has saved me hundreds of dollars in ink every year.
Sure. I read the paper.
Actually, it was interesting to read in large part in terms of the numbers of way faults can occur in the station data. Given the rather hackish heuristics used to detect faults, it actually lowered my confidence in the quality of station data.
When you conduct science, you try to eliminate confounding factors until you're left with just your one experimental value. In this case: temperature over time. Given the number of error sources listed in just this paper alone, along with the fact that half the changes went undocumented, it would make me even more dubious of the temperature record without having empirical data to verify it. That's why I've said the satellite data makes the issue moot moving forward; unless something goes tragically wrong the environment around a satellite won't be exposed to any of the confounding factors that impact surface station data.
To go back to my original point, somebody needed to get out there and do the legwork that Watts did, and provide empirical confirmation. You might not like the fact that he's a crackpot, but you (and RC.org) show a very disappointing trend seen quite commonly in climate scientists, that they dismiss anything that comes out of someone that disagrees with them, even if their contribution is valuable. The Menne 2009 paper refreshingly takes the opposite approach even while reinforcing your point that the longitudinal data is much more important. It even cited Pielke as a source of criticisms about the temperature record.
When I said back in my first post in this long thread that RC.org was on the bullshit end of the surface station data, this was precisely the point: empirical data trumps statistical filtering (especially with something so complex). Dismissing a source of empirical confirmation data, because you don't like the guy's political views, is the bullshit end of the argument.
Or to paraphrase Phil Jones: Why should I make my data available, when critics might use it disprove my work?
Anti-scientific bullshit.
>>It should be more than enough for Custom TF2, if thats what you're thinking. Please let that be what you're thinking.
It's what I'm thinking. =)
It really depends on the dev environment and how hackish it all has to be to make it work.
>>Nevertheless, call to authority is a falacy
Saying that appeal to authority is a fallacy is a fallacy.
But nothing fails more than confusing Elron and Heinlein. =) =) =)
Heinlein's point is a valid one - pacifists benefit from the sacrifice of thousands or millions of dead veterans, who died for their freedom, but somehow hold themselves to be morally superior to these guys who often paid the ultimate sacrifice.
>>Yet again, it's the "everyone else was ignoring" clause that I'm disagreeing with. Watts isn't the first person to repeatedly survey [noaa.gov] stations in person
From the paper that you just cited at me as "Watts wasn't the first person to survey stations in person":
"A number of recent articles have also raised
concerns about the site characteristics of U.S. HCN
stations by way of photographic documentation
(e.g., Davey ahnd Pielke 2005; Pielke et al. 2007a,b).
Moreover, there is evidence that a large fraction
of HCN sites have poor ratings with respect to the
site classification criteria used by the U.S. Climate
Reference Network (A. Watts 2008 personal communication;
refer also to www.surfacestations.org1).
In at least one study (i.e., Mahmood et al. 2006),
photographic documentation and other sources of
information regarding the exposure characteristics
of COOP and HCN sites were used to link poor
siting with measurement bias. Such evidence raises
legitimate questions about the representativeness of
temperature measurements from a number of U.S.
HCN sites. However, from a climate change perspective,
the primary concern is not so much the absolute
measurement bias of a particular site but rather the
changes in that bias over time, which the TOB and
pairwise adjustments effectively address (Vose et al.
2003; Menne and Williams 2009).
The goal of the HCN version 2 adjustments (and
homogenization in general) is not to ensure that
observations conform to an absolute standard but
rather to remove the effect of relative bias changes
that occur during a station's history of observation.
In this regard, photographic documentation, though
valuable, is most valuable when it is used to document
the timing and causes of such shifts in bias through
time. Ultimately, the magnitude of relative changes
in the bias of observations, whatever the source,
cannot be inferred from the metadata. Instead, the
effect of station changes and nonstandard instrument
exposure on temperature trends must be determined
via a systematic evaluation of the observations themselves
(Peterson 2006), generally through relative
comparisons. Such an analysis suggests that the effect
of undocumented changes appears to be at least as
significant as documented changes in the HCN and
that homogeneity testing for both types of shifts is
critical."
Again, you're having trouble with the thesis statement thing, though I appreciate the various links to read.
Economics is actually the closest parallel to climate science, as applied mathematics is very close to some parts of computer science (and other fields with other parts).
If you think the consensus that climate science isn't science by the philosophy crowd bothers you, you ought to wonder why. I'm perfectly well aware that people in the field have adopted the title of scientists for themselves, in order to achieve a patina of respectability, but everyone has been doing that these days. Even philosophy has tried to adopt the patina of science for itself since the early 20th Century.
I'm not of the camp that it's not science (well, depending on my mood), but it certainly doesn't meet all the criteria of a real science, either. That's why I think we really should have a third category beyond arts and sciences for the semi-scientific schools of inquiry, like climate science and economics.
>>I realize that you think that "I don't fucking know what I'm talking about" but I'm curious as to what you think qualifies someone to be a physicist?
I was just annoyed that you called me a non-physicist. I let it pass once with your rather insulting Salem Hypothesis thing, but I don't let things go twice. To re-iterate what I said before, you don't know what you're talking about when you're trying to insult me like that.
If you label me a non-physicist, then I'll have to start calling you a weather man.
>>Again, you're not the first person to change the topic from "how many independent empirical data sources have been shown to be consistent with dynamical climate model ensembles" to something like "Is justified true belief knowledge?".
As I expected, you missed the point. It was amusing that you linked a pdf from the department I took classes from, though.
>>strengthened their argument that their statistical methods are valid.
This is the key takeaway point here. Confirmation of something can often be as valuable as evidence that disproves a hypothesis.
He did legwork that nobody else did; it is entirely possible he could have found that they'd overlooked something in their purely statistical methods, and it's possible that he did, but the errors he found fell well within the fairly generous error ranges of the measurement data.
>>You are demonstrably a second class citizen, and you have it thrust in your face every day.
Thrust in your face? By whom? I think you're confusing explicit vs. implicit racism... if that's even the right word - I think culture is a far better way of describing it. Otherwise you get into problems by defining people like the Black Panthers to be racists against black people. And maybe you would make that claim, I'm not sure.
I actually think we're agreeing here, just using different terms. The real challenge is overcoming the expectations against success. Once you do that, the kids see all the opportunities that they have out there, and tend to do quite well. But all the scholarships in the world won't make more black kids go into CS if they themselves are not interested in it, for whatever reason.
>>I'm tired of the repetitive nature of my conversations with non-physicists.
If you can't engage in proper argumentation, then you're really not helping. An argument takes the form of a thesis statement, and supporting statements and references. When the references you cite support my point, and you don't make a thesis statement, you're accomplishing less than nothing.
The Watts research is case in point. He went out and did legwork that everyone else was ignoring. Unless you're actually claiming it's better off not knowing the quality of surface stations, he made a contribution. But the papers you reference, and your own statements on here, show your amazing reluctance to ever grant a single scrap of credit to the guy. I actually agree with you that he's a nutjob, but these... blinders... that climate scientists put on really does away with a lot of the aura the field so desperately tries to craft around itself.
To use your own words, it's like a modified Salem Hypothesis that lets non-physicists like climate scientists think that their hand-waving is a legitimate form of argumentation, whereas everyone else is an anti-scientific nutjob. It probably comes from their field being only tenuously considered a science. Yes, yes, I've read http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/is-climate-modelling-science/, and as someone who as actually studied the philosophy of science, in graduate school... RC.org is wrong, again. Climate science is closer in practice to economics than any other field. So either economics is a science, or climate science isn't, or you have to put some sort of nebulous grey area together for fields that make observations and construct hypothesis for predictions, but can't run controlled experiments and have problems with falsifiability.
>>Claiming that 90% of the stations are compromised would require showing that the previously documented empirical evidence hadn't corrected for the bias
You're not familiar with the Gettier paradox then. I'm tempted here to just quote a bunch of papers on it to show you why you're wrong, without ever saying why, just to show you why your method of argumentation is so poor. But I'll just leave it up to you to research it and figure out for yourself why this claim is fallacious.
>>It's useless to debate with somebody who genuinely believes that killing other people for wearing the wrong flag on their uniforms can ever be okay.
And it's useless to debate someone who would throw down his weapons and run when the Germans rolled across his border.
Violence should never be a first option, but it always needs to be an option for dealing with evil, or evil will win. It's as simple as that.
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty. - Robert Heinlein
>>I studied history as well as an extra major - and you're just plain wrong. Nobody can be free of bias, it's a basic fact of human mental development, one of those biasses is our moral view - you cannot, EVER switch it off. So yes, impossible.
I'm talking about judging characters in the past using the context of our modern times. This you CAN do, and I work in US History these days, and work with a lot of historians, and they all agree on this point.
For example, consider that you (probably) think that hanging someone is wrong. There's this historical character X, who is an amazing guy, a paragon of virtue, and he also cleaned up his area by hanging a lot of people. You'd claim this guy was scum?
>>If we do that, then Vikings raping and pillaging cannot be judged against because it was NOBLE in THEIR morality ?
"God, save us from the Vikings" mean anything to you? I'm talking about the context of the time, not their individual morality.
>>Yes, Christians weren't expansionist at all...
I didn't say they weren't expansionist. I think it's a mistake to equate the 1000 year history of Muslim expansionism, conquest, and conversion by the sword with anything the Christians did, including the Crusades (which were the biggest Christian effort that could be labeled this way).
Probably the closest analogy you could find in Chrisendom would be the various Khanates, but they were definitely not expanding to spread Christianity.
And again, your entire rant about individuals and soldiers being haunted has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Christian doctrine regarding war. I'd summarize, but it's probably better for you to just read the official policy for yourself:
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=12206
In a nutshell, it is a moral evil to be an ultimate pacifist, and there's no justification in the Bible to be that way. There's a really serious difference between a love for peace, and refusing to stop a rapist from attacking your daughter.
>>I have answered that question. Repeatedly.
No, you haven't. Answering a question involves writing a thesis statement. References are not an acceptable substitute for a thesis statement. The Menne quote you've given twice before accepts his classification of surface stations as "good" and "bad", and you've now accepted #1.
>>I've just been saying that his "research" isn't original, ignores many previous studies, and didn't uncover the UHI problems that Watts was clearly expecting (which does refute argument #2).
My entire point is that empirical studies trump statistical filtering. The GISS data for example, does some of its UHI filtering by comparing temperature spikes between an urban station and a rural station. How do they know which is which? They look at them on a map. This is what I called bullshit on - if the rural station has had asphalt put around it, and now has an AC exhaust blowing right on top of it, they have no way of knowing except by doing the legwork that Watts did. Claiming that stats can fix everything when 90% of stations are compromised is nonsense. I know they do a lot of clever tricks (checking for temperature dips on windy days for example), but I'm not happy with any substitute except satellite data (validating via another empirical source).
>>And? Maybe he wasn't talking about grind in MMO scales but in what he can stomach? I know I can't be arsed to bash mobs over and over again to gain a level or the 50 thingamajigs needed for some joke of a quest.
Precisely. I hate running around killing the same monster over and over again.
This is the very definition of tedium in a MMORPG for me, and Aion was full of it.
>>Watts did a service to the climate scientists forcing them to examine their data more closely. In the end though it strengthened their case.
Precisely. Empirical research always trumps statistical approximation, especially when your dataset is potentially 90% error-prone.
But the AGW camp would rather shut up than admit that...
A relevant one that shows the EPA is claiming CO2 is a pollutant that endangers human life, i.e., a poison.
Who put sand into your vagina?
>>You were just wrong before, now you're wrong and angry?
Not wrong... but kind of annoyed you're failing basic reading comprehension.
>>It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid
Not true. And... not true. It's a newb mistake to judge the distant past by modern morality.
>>That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time
The equation of Islamic and Christian worlds/expansionism is one of the fundamental mistakes that people make these days; this is exactly what I'm talking about.
>>Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"
Demonstrating your complete ignorance of Christian doctrine. Christians are supposed to stand up to evil, and having people raiding your countries, kidnapping small boys, emasculating them, and sending them back at you as super soldiers IS evil.
>>Sometimes they are also unavoidable, when the enemy soldier is marching down your streets, you HAVE to fight back - but even THEN it's still murder when you shoot him.
No, it's not murder. Again, demonstrating your complete ignorance. The Christian ethos is a lot more common sense than what you are pretending that it is.
>>No, you haven't been talking only about issue #1. You were clearly implying that Watts has uncovered issues that Real Climate is "bullshitting" about. I've been trying to stress that this isn't true.
I have been. You've been failing to understand this.
Empirical research trumps statistical filtering. Go back and read what I said.
>>You know what? Forget it. This is too repetitive for me to bother. Have a nice day.
It's a shame... yet another pro-AGW person that has a complete mental block to ever admit that someone in the anti-AGW camp might be right about something.
It's a very simple question: is his surface station data accurate or not? Why can't you answer this question??
I'm too tired to provide a car analogy, but what the EPA pulled is the equivalent of the state department claiming it can regulate all industry because industry produces CO2, CO2 causes global warming, global warming is against American interests, and therefore treasonous.
The endangerment clause was designed for pollutants which harm humans, i.e. poisons, fucktard, not a nebulous connection like it has. Unfortunately the supreme court opened the doors on this a couple years back, so it looks legal.
Yet again, you are missing the point. There's two related issues here: 1) his assessment of surface station quality and 2) differences, if any, between his collection of stations and the national average. I've been only talking about 1), which you keep ignoring in order to talk about 2.
Hell, the quote above you give seems to accept his rankings of surface stations. This is what I mean as a validation of his work. I'm utterly uninterested in his conclusions or lack thereof from his subset of stations (ie 2), only if you or others think his assessment of stations is accurate.
Perhaps you've never seen what I'm talking about?