I'll accept this idea that there are honest and unbiased climate change denialists the minute I see one.
The problem is you're not emotionally equipped to recognize one when you see one. You're so convinced that anyone who disagrees with you must be dishonest and biased, you've got a blind spot you just can see through.
Imagine, for a moment, someone who denies that there is any sort of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming based on a sincere examination of the data. They certainly don't deny that climate changes (as it has and always will), and they certainly don't deny basic physics or chemistry - but when confronted with the assertion that CO2 emissions by man, if kept up at their current rate, will eliminate the Himalayan glaciers in 5 years, or cause the arctic to be ice free in winter, or raise sea levels by 20m in less than 100 years, is decidedly skeptical.
How would you discern between the oil lobby funded shill who is being dishonest and biased because he cares only about his current stock options, and cares nothing about the lives of his children, and the skeptical scientist who has no ties to any petroleum companies and has come to his opinion through careful, honest, and unbiased review?
No amount of sarcasm on your part is going to change the fact that pretty much all denialists are either incompetent, dishonest, or both.
Seriously? Ad hominem as a defense of broad sweeping generalizations about anyone who disagrees with you?
Put the shoe on the other foot, and imagine that the vitriolic hyperbole running through your emotions is *exactly* what the other side believes of you. How the hell are you ever going to get beyond the 2nd grader tit-for-tat? How the hell is anyone on the outside of the argument going to believe anything *either* side says when this is the typical attitude?
Only the most unreasonable partisan is going to assert that everyone who agrees with their point of view is unbiased and honest, and all people tho disagree must be biased and dishonest.
I think it is too complex at this point to prove one way or the other, just like we can't prove abstract reasoning in the brain - doesn't mean we can't act on what seem to be very good indications:-)
I guess the problem is that acting on things that cannot be proven is really tricky - we may have wildly different suggestions for actions, despite seeing the same "indications".
You'll also have to find a better analogy than "abstract reasoning in the brain", though - although the brain is definitely complex, and possibly just as complex as climate and weather patterns, you've got no assertion of cause or effect there. A more apt analogy would be something that makes a causal assertion about an incredibly complex topic, like "most of the times, teaching people religion makes them behave in evil ways". Catastrophic AGW isn't just a statement of complexity, it's a statement that within a field of immense complexity, there is a simple causal motivator (CO2), that will produce catastrophic change.
In any case, I think the original AC had a point, and it seems that given the right caveats, you probably agree with 97% of what he said:)
The 'falsifiable hypothesis' side of it is proven and rarely disputed. That's physics and chemistry.
Really? State the falsifiable hypothesis of catastrophic AGW, please. Any specific observation that would falsify it would be sufficient as well.
The basic physics and chemistry might be proven and undisputed, but the linking of all that physics and chemistry into a coherent theory that states that human emissions of CO2 are going to catastrophically change the climate for the warmer isn't nearly as undisputed - *that's* the falsifiable hypothesis I'm looking for.
Wait a minute. 97% of those scientists have facts to back up what they say. You're making it like sound like it's a public survey of people who are guessing.
If 97% of those scientists had facts, they should've polled them for citations of those facts, not their opinions. You make it sound like the 3% of scientists couldn't possibly have had facts to back up what they say, leading us to essentially judge this as a popularity contest, or a statistical guess that 97% of people will always be more right than 3% of people.
If we're going to do science in the strictest sense, what the survey should've asked was "what observations would falsify your hypothesis"? The "heads I win, tails you lose" of AGW "predictions" doesn't count as science until it can be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis, and scientists aren't doing science unless they're actively trying to falsify their own closely held beliefs as best as they can.
Monty Python wasn't trying to convince people to be better at hide and seek - 10/10 *was* trying to convince people to reduce their carbon footprint. The silliness of Monty Python is predicated on the complete unimportance of the topic at hand - make that topic an important one, and it's no longer quite the same joke.
Just imagine for a moment that instead of people who wouldn't listen to 10/10's carbon reduction message, the film blew up people who didn't support traditional marriage. Would it still be funny like Monty Python?
Because of course, the only unbiased and honest people are those that agree with catastrophic AGW.
With that kind of basic premise, even legitimate investigations into behavior are going to be seen as witch hunts. The automatic assumption of good faith on your side and bad faith on the other side is what causes these kinds of things into escalating lawsuits - simply handing over the requested documents would've saved time, money, and apparently was impossible given the extreme level of distrust between the parties.
I guess I'd ask the following question of Mann's supporters - what evidence could possibly be uncovered by this investigation that would make it legitimate for you? If we got a hand written letter by Mann where he states "Those fools! I've completely faked my data, and they keep giving me more money, buahahaha!", would that exonerate Cuccinelli?
"The way in which Mann was exonerated proved extremely controversial and even neutral commentators appeared to be taken aback by some of the panel’s reasoning. Writing in The Atlantic, Clive Crook, widely seen as a neutral on the question of global warming, said:"
“The report...says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers – so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false... Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.”"
The idea that less regulation leads to less favoritism towards corporations is qiute bizarre. Without regulation, what's to stop politicians outright awarding money to their business buddies/cronies?
Perhaps the difference is that *politicians* should be regulated, not corporations.
Regulation puts in place a mechanism for politicians to influence things - play ball, donate campaign money, and regulators will look favorably on you. Hire my niece for some cush job, and we can arrange a multi-billion dollar decision in your direction.
The simple problem is this - any given system will elicit certain types of behavior, and a system where government decides the success or failure of a business venture will elicit competition on a *political* level rather than a *value to consumer* level. Corporations spend billions of dollars *lobbying* instead of *innovating* because their continued success requires them to compete on a political level.
Now, can I specify a perfect system? Nope. But I'll still assert I can identify flaws in the one we currently have, and that we can as a people work towards rectifying them, stepwise.
272 million for greenpeace, and 487 million for WWF, *per year*. Subsidies for wind, solar, hybrid vehicles, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent in compliance with legislation like the Clean Air Act.
Now, perhaps not as much political power as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or AIG and General Motors, but almost zero? I think not.
I think the point being made by the GP is that if government was kept to its proper place, you wouldn't have favorable treatment, or government contracts. This point was made by Bastiat in the 1800s: http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf
When government has control over each and every industry, then the "success" of anyone engaging in those industries is just as much driven by how much value they provide, as how much political clout they wield. If anything our "best and strongest years" represented a transition from the wartime controlled economy to more liberty - to use that as a reason to return to a war economy or a 90% tax rate is to miss the point of the post-war prosperity we enjoyed.
At the end of the day, you've got to come up with some rationale for why you think a politician can provide more value for you than someone competing in a free market, if you're going to suggest that the government should rightfully be a primary driver of the economy. You're right to point out that both the commercial sector and government can be negative forces, but in end, in the commercial sector, providing value produces success, and in the government, political influence produces success. Which driver would you rather have?
In fact, the Windows firewall can be configured to apply different policies base on the source of the packet, just like any "real" firewall you'd want.
Yeah, just had an interesting conversation at work about that - am I really willing to assert that each box run its own iptables process, or would I like to have some hardware router take care of that for me? In our case, we're looking at doing our own iptables because we can't get decent support from the guys in charge of the network hardware, but I think in general, we'd assert that having a firewall run interference for an entire subnet is a Good Thing(TM). Now granted, ipv6 doesn't mean I can't have NAT, but it seems that the assertion that *everyone* should be peers does have some other consequences.
IPv6 is trivial to deploy internally, why not use it?
Good question. Probably mostly because I've already got a backlog that'll take me months to get through:)
Now, at home, I actually disabled IPv6 because I was trying to diagnose some VPN issues (yes, I know, yet another hit against VPN technology:) ) - I suppose I could try going completely ipv6 behind my wireless router, but I guess I just haven't thought of it yet.
It just won't happen all at once, it'll be a slow, painful thing that will cost a lot of money, a lot of time.
And I think you nailed it right there - because it's a slow thing, that will take only bits of money spread out over a lot of time, it's always going to be at the bottom of the things to do stack.
what happens when IPv4 congestion gets to the point that even my broadband doesn't get a public IP, that my ISP starts NATing customers together
Actually, that's a really good point - and I think it's when that happens that we setup a worldwide ipv6 VPN:)
I'm all happy about the idea of ipv6, but as kludgy as ipv4 is, it's still working. Not pretty, not elegant, but workable - and I'm familiar with the ups and downs of how to keep it workable. ipv6, on the other hand, as pretty as it is, I just haven't seen any deployment large enough to convince me that there aren't unintended consequences - i mean, just imagine if malware didn't get stopped at the gates of each NAT it encountered, but instead had direct addressibility to everything in your local network? (yes, yes, I know, don't run windoze...words to live by)
I guess this whole thing kinda smells like the y2k thing - lots of worrying, but I'm not convinced that doomsday will really happen.
Being peers means that A can contact B and B can contact A, on equal terms as far as the network is concerned.
Which is why we have the VPN "kludges" on top:)
Yes, not exactly ideal, but I'll still assert that even with ipv6, you've still got "kludges" that obfuscate the fact that your network traversal isn't as simple as just knocking on a port on a local subnet. Once you're past that first switch, you may *think* you're on equal terms with your peer, but you're getting routed in a way that is distinctly different than if you were hitting a box on the local subnet, like it or not.
I guess I'm of the cynical opinion that if NAT wasn't "good enough", it would have been replaced already. As cool as it may seem to have an ip address for every screw and nail in my entire house, it just hasn't been nearly as important as the folk who have been playing with ipv6 thought.
Eventually, every network gets subdivided at some piece of equipment, be it a transparent bridge or router somewhere. The idea of being a "peer" is an imaginary one really - other than boxes plugged into the exact same switch or router on the same subnet, you're doing a network traversal somewhere. NAT makes this traversal more explicit, perhaps, but evil?
Hell, if you really want other "peers", there's all kinds of VPN stuff you can do that will effectively give you the same thing.
What are you saying, that thermodynamics don't apply when diets are involved? That you can somehow burn more than you take in and miraculously NOT lose weight?
What I'm trying to say is that the naive application of thermodynamics don't apply. Let's do a few thought experiments:
1) broken digestive system - imagine a digestive system that simply passed all matter from the mouth directly through, and absorbed none of the nutrients. As the food squeezes through, it costs some energy, but the body doesn't get any energy from this incoming matter. In this case, the simple thermodynamic understanding is confounded by the fact that the calories must not only be *consumed* they must be digested and transferred to the body. Fiber is a good example of "calories in the mouth" != "calories presented to the body"
2) broken pancreas - imagine a pancreas that cannot produce insulin (type 1 diabetics). Without insulin, fatty acids cannot be fixed into fat cells. No matter how many calories go into the mouth, and are in fact digested and absorbed by the digestive system, they cannot be fixed into the fat cells.
3) maladaptive burn rate - imagine a system that over adapts to effective caloric intake, and dramatically decreases metabolism and energy use when in starvation mode. You decrease your caloric intake by 10%, but the system decreases energy use by 20% - even with the lower calories (assuming enough insulin present), you can gain weight.
There are all kinds of ways our body deals with calories. It can dump them in urine with ketones, or in feces without digesting them. Internal bacteria can consume them. It can build and repair tissues. It can generate extra heat. It can use them to activate muscles. It can store them in fat cells. Our body continually manages a fine balance of all of these through a complex system of hormonal balances. Simply measuring the amount of food going into the mouth, and the amount of time we use our muscles misses out on a whole host of other variables in the equation.
In short, obesity as we know it is not a problem with caloric intake in the mouth and muscle use, obesity is a problem of *fat accumulation*. Hormonal balances are upset, and the fat cells improperly store fat rather than releasing it as they usually do. Understanding the true root cause of the situation, we can then find an actual remediation - it's not about less calories, it's about less insulin, which means less blood sugar, which means less carbs.
You make some interesting points, but your entire post history is basically shilling for and ultra low-carb diet The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution.
And I sincerely apologize for that. I've got no stake in any low carb diet company, nor the slow burn fitness guy, but as an atheist, I have definitely gotten an appreciation for what it must feel like to be an evangelical christian trying to spread the word of god - apparently zealotry based on epiphany isn't something limited to christianity:)
I think for me, the fact that the simple "calories in, calories out" trope was something I *really* believed in, I mean second law of thermodynamics type of belief, when that belief was challenged, and the alternative hypothesis actually managed to explain situations that seemed inexplicable before, I felt what alcoholics refer to as "a moment of clarity". I suppose I have some naive sense that if only people learned what I learned, and saw what I saw, they'd have the same epiphany - but likely as not, most people just aren't interested in challenging their beliefs, and out of every 100 people who may read a comment of mine, maybe only 5 or 6 actually internalize anything.
So, yes, I can't help myself from railing against the "calories in, calories out" trope when I see it pop up, and you'll definitely notice it in my comment history, but it's a function of my own naive evangelism, not because I'm a shill for any particular product.
Anyway, good luck on your journey as well, and a pleasure to discuss the topic with you:)
Genetics is an enabling factor, not a causal one. Yes, you have to be standing in the impact zone of a large meteor in order to get squished by it, but it's the meteor that does the squishing, not the location you're standing in.
" Type 1, called IDDM (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus), now was recognized as an autoimmune disease that appeared primarily in childhood or adolescence. Near the final phases of the attack, the person stops producing insulin and requires injected insulin. At the time of diagnosis, such a person often has excessive thirst and urination, has lost a lot of weight, and has an extremely high blood sugar. This person is normal weight or thin when Type 1 diabetes starts and may stay relatively trim through life. Type 1 occurs in about 10% of all people who have diabetes. Treatment for this type revolves around adjusting the dosages and number of insulin injections to match diet and exercise"
The reason a high-carb diet is used for fattening livestock is because it's cheap, actually. Everything else is a happy side benefit for the farmers, but price is king.
I'll grant you it's cheap, but it's also particularly effective, and there is a real biochemical reason for it.
I'll challenge you to find *any* farmer that has successfully used protein and fat to fatten livestock, in the absence of carbohydrates - it simply doesn't work. You can blame the livestock for "getting full", but in the end, even if you force fed them, you simply can't fatten an animal without carbs.
I tried a low-carb diet for a while and no matter what you do, eating a 40oz steak will fill up your stomach and make you feel bloated, it's a simple question of mass.
A 40oz steak is going to fill up your stomach, but bloating is caused by water retention due to carbohydrate intake.
You're ignoring my point about the indiginous peoples of South America and Asia subsisting in good health on high-GI diets for thousands of years before western civilization came along.
That's not true at all. Agriculture in the new world was significantly lower GI, and most indigenous peoples were primarily hunter gatherers. Check your sources.
The only way you can eat 5000 calories per day without gaining weight would be if you shit pure liquid fat to get rid of the excess calories
Considering an average of 200g of feces a day, for sure you're losing calories out that end. Add ketones in the urine (5 cal/gram), and you're talking a bunch of calories that don't get stored as fat. Again, basic biochemistry - fat does not get deposited unless you've got insulin around.
But I shy away from exercise regimes that like to bill themselves as revolutions, major giant breakthroughs etc., it smacks of sensationalism and infomercials. It may be a good regime, but why would it advertise itself like that if it was?
I agree, the whole "revolution" thing is overrated, but damn, it works. 30 minutes a week, and I keep getting stronger every week. You hit plateaus every once in a while, but it's great to stay strong without spending hours in the gym.
If I ate the exact same amount of calories as pure simple carbs instead? Yeah, I'd gain weight. I didn't say GI was completely irrelevant, but there are other factors which are far more relevant.
Well, quantify it - if you switched out 200g of what you currently eat for 200g of sugar, how many pounds would you expect to gain (keeping exercise constant)? Now, without switching out, how many extra calories do you think you'd have to eat in addition to gain that same amount of pounds.
Have you gotten a chance to listen to Mr. Taubes' lecture yet?
No, basic biochemistry is that unless energy out equals energy in, you will either gain or burn reserve energy. Every calorie you eat that you don't make use of will be stored as fat.
Wrong. Fat is only stored under the influence of insulin. Take a type 1 diabetic, who cannot produce insulin, and feed them all you want - they won't gain a pound.
Your body has many ways of dumping calories out of the system besides fat deposition - excrement and urine being the two obvious ones.
But I've worked on a farm and I can tell you that animals are fed super-high calorie foods for fattening, simple as that. They aren't fed pure-fat or super-high fat feed because they won't eat enough of it, they feel full too soon.
You're contradicting yourself there - obviously pure-fat or super-high fat feed would be the most efficient way of getting the maximum number of calories into their system - so why doesn't that work? Why do they "feel too full"? Could it be that in fact, carbohydrates promote fat deposition, and shunt energy into the fat cells, making the animals still hungry because the needs of their other cells for energy have been neglected?
Can you eat two big fatty inch-thick pork chops? How do you feel afterwards? I'm betting you feel bloated and overfull.
I feel great. Not bloated, not overfull at all. I can eat a pound of salami, a 40 oz. steak, and feel just fine. Since I've restricted my carbohydrate intake, I simply don't feel bloated or overfull anymore.
One of the things I didn't understand clearly before when I did eat carbohydrates, was feeling bloated, overfull, but *starving*. I'd wake up at midnight, stuff myself with carrots, popcorn, and I'd feel like my stomach was bursting - but I'd still be hungry. Until I understood the metabolic path that the food was taking (shunted to fat cells thanks to insulin), and that in fact my muscles were starving, I was always confused by this.
Regarding ketosis, liver and kidney damage are a factor in the long term, as well as the danger of falling into ketoacidosis.
Citation, please. A single case of ketosis falling into ketoacidosis, and cured by increasing carbohydrate intake will do. Ketosis is a healthy state, and doesn't cause liver or kidney damage, period.
If glycemic index is all that matters, how do you explain that heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases are nowhere near as widespread in places like South America and Asia where the staple foods are all high-GI, such as rice and potatoes, as it is in the western world?
I think you're missing the forest for the trees there - in every case, when a previously low-glycemic diet in a population was replaced by a high-glycemic diet (be it due to the introduction of sugar, flour, or simply the development of agriculture), health and wellness decreased. The question you should be asking is, "before the introduction of the high-glycemic western diet, why were rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases so low in native populations"?
I'm sure you've lost weight during your low-carb diet, meats and fats are hugely filling and fruits and vegetables etc. are low in calories, so no wonder you've lost weight, you've been ingesting less energy over all, a certain way to weight loss.
You don't understand - I've increased my caloric intake by leaps and bounds. I probably get 5000 calories a day, and I was gaining weight on less than 2500 calories a day when eating carbohydrates.
What I don't believe is that you've put on any real muscle with only 30 minutes of exercise per week.
Slow burn fitness. It's actually quite amazing. As an example of the muscle growth, I started off only being able to do two of the pushups (20 seconds per rep), and a
As long as you eat a balanced diet, glycemic index is more or less irrelevant, certainly less relevant than cholesterol and total caloric instake. Focusing exclusively on glycemic index is just yet another fad diet for people who are afraid of changing their lifestyle.
Did you actually check out the lecture? Total caloric intake and dietary cholesterol are completely irrelevant compared to glycemic index. This isn't a fad - this is basic biochemistry.
Think of it - what do you feed to animals to fatten them up? High calorie diets of very dense fats? Or do you feed them the sweetest carbs you can find?
Ketoacidosis is obviously a serious medical condition, but this does not mean ketosis is good for you, you still need to be under supervision.
Not sure what your primary language is, but your logic here is lacking - it's like saying "Cliff jumping is obviously a dangerous sport, but this does not mean that jumping is good for you - you still need to be under supervision". Ketosis is not a medical condition that requires supervision, period. It is the normal state of the human body, perverted in modern man by carbohydrate intake.
Now, if you still believe otherwise, cite me a single deleterious symptom of ketosis, or a single report of death due to ketosis.
but the fact of the matter is that GI is just a very small part of a healthy diet and one you hardly need consider unless you have special needs
The problem here is the visible and invisible damage - yes, there are only a certain portion of the population that will gain weight while eating carbohydrates, and it will be obvious to us visibly that they're having health problems. But the problems with heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases are in fact very important even to those who don't show outward signs.
I've lost 25kg and put on visible muscle during the last 2½ years.
Congratulations for you. I've done the same thing with unlimited caloric intake, only 30 minutes of exercise *per week*, just by keeping under 40g of carbs a day. Now that you've got two contrasting examples, how can you declare yourself proof that calories in/calories out is the most significant change?
Is it possible that the fact that you cut out the "simple carbs" was enough to make the difference in your glycemic index? Do you believe that you could change your diet to primarily candy and soda, but keep the same calorie intake, and still lose weight? If not, why not, since according to you calories matter most?
I believe your understanding of your own anecdotal experience isn't as thorough as you believe.
No, it doesn't. Carbohydrates, in general, raise blood sugar. Protein and fat do not.
Your body sees the sugar, and puts out insulin to trigger the absorption of said sugar by your fat tissues.
Actually, insulin is triggered to tell your fat cells to hold onto fatty acids (rather than releasing them into the bloodstream), so that your cells use up the blood sugar currently in your bloodstream.
Unfortunately for you, your fat tissues cannot absorb the syrup, but must wait for the liver to process it.
Actually, at this point, the fructose heads to the liver, which helps package up more fatty acids, which head out to your fat cells (which at this point, aren't releasing fatty acids, thanks to the insulin levels).
The double whammy that sucrose or HFCS gives you is due to it's composition of both glucose, and fructose. The fructose hits the liver, and the glucose triggers the insulin response. Between the liver packaging up more fatty acids for transport to the fat cells, and the insulin suppressing the release of fatty acids from your fat cells, you get fat cells that get fatter.
Now, in some portion of the population, although this creates some dangerous LDL running around in your bloodstream, it won't cause obesity - as soon as the insulin levels go down, the fat cells start releasing their fatty acids again. For the portion of the population that tends towards obesity, even when the insulin levels go down, the fat cells don't get the message - they don't start releasing their energy stores like they're supposed to.
So when you see a 400 pound fat man eating a pizza like he's starving, it's because he is - his fat cells are literally stealing energy from his other tissues, and not releasing it back into the bloodstream when they're supposed to.
Cut out the simple carbs by all means, but leave the complex carbs in.
Not if they're going to raise blood sugar levels. Being "complex" is no panacea for having a high glycemic index.
they're downright essential if you actually use your body and don't just sit around in front of a monitor all day.
Tell that to the Inuit, or the Masai, who ate exclusively animal products before the introduction of western diets. You can't live without fat, and you can't live without protein, but you can live without carbs just fine.
ALL food will raise your blood sugar levels,
BS. Fat and protein do not measurably raise blood sugar levels, period.
Too few carbs and you go into ketosis, which is a potentially dangerous medical condition necessitating constant supervision.
BS again. You're confusing ketosis with ketoacidosis.
whole wheat bread is made without sugar, orange juice has no added sugar and can actually be deliciously slightly sour and outmeal contains nothing but whole oats
The problem there is that whole wheat bread turns into blood sugar very quickly, orange juice comes with plenty of sugar without needing to add any, and whole oats turns into blood sugar very quickly. Regardless of added sugar, these foods are particularly *unhealthy*, even though we've been told they're good for us.
The key here is that HFCS is bad because it raises insulin levels. By the same token, anything that raises insulin levels is going to suffer from the same issues. Welcome to the wonderful world of carbohydrates!
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The problem is you're not emotionally equipped to recognize one when you see one. You're so convinced that anyone who disagrees with you must be dishonest and biased, you've got a blind spot you just can see through.
Imagine, for a moment, someone who denies that there is any sort of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming based on a sincere examination of the data. They certainly don't deny that climate changes (as it has and always will), and they certainly don't deny basic physics or chemistry - but when confronted with the assertion that CO2 emissions by man, if kept up at their current rate, will eliminate the Himalayan glaciers in 5 years, or cause the arctic to be ice free in winter, or raise sea levels by 20m in less than 100 years, is decidedly skeptical.
How would you discern between the oil lobby funded shill who is being dishonest and biased because he cares only about his current stock options, and cares nothing about the lives of his children, and the skeptical scientist who has no ties to any petroleum companies and has come to his opinion through careful, honest, and unbiased review?
Seriously? Ad hominem as a defense of broad sweeping generalizations about anyone who disagrees with you?
Put the shoe on the other foot, and imagine that the vitriolic hyperbole running through your emotions is *exactly* what the other side believes of you. How the hell are you ever going to get beyond the 2nd grader tit-for-tat? How the hell is anyone on the outside of the argument going to believe anything *either* side says when this is the typical attitude?
Only the most unreasonable partisan is going to assert that everyone who agrees with their point of view is unbiased and honest, and all people tho disagree must be biased and dishonest.
Physician, heal thyself!
I guess the problem is that acting on things that cannot be proven is really tricky - we may have wildly different suggestions for actions, despite seeing the same "indications".
You'll also have to find a better analogy than "abstract reasoning in the brain", though - although the brain is definitely complex, and possibly just as complex as climate and weather patterns, you've got no assertion of cause or effect there. A more apt analogy would be something that makes a causal assertion about an incredibly complex topic, like "most of the times, teaching people religion makes them behave in evil ways". Catastrophic AGW isn't just a statement of complexity, it's a statement that within a field of immense complexity, there is a simple causal motivator (CO2), that will produce catastrophic change.
In any case, I think the original AC had a point, and it seems that given the right caveats, you probably agree with 97% of what he said :)
Really? State the falsifiable hypothesis of catastrophic AGW, please. Any specific observation that would falsify it would be sufficient as well.
The basic physics and chemistry might be proven and undisputed, but the linking of all that physics and chemistry into a coherent theory that states that human emissions of CO2 are going to catastrophically change the climate for the warmer isn't nearly as undisputed - *that's* the falsifiable hypothesis I'm looking for.
If 97% of those scientists had facts, they should've polled them for citations of those facts, not their opinions. You make it sound like the 3% of scientists couldn't possibly have had facts to back up what they say, leading us to essentially judge this as a popularity contest, or a statistical guess that 97% of people will always be more right than 3% of people.
If we're going to do science in the strictest sense, what the survey should've asked was "what observations would falsify your hypothesis"? The "heads I win, tails you lose" of AGW "predictions" doesn't count as science until it can be stated as a falsifiable hypothesis, and scientists aren't doing science unless they're actively trying to falsify their own closely held beliefs as best as they can.
Monty Python wasn't trying to convince people to be better at hide and seek - 10/10 *was* trying to convince people to reduce their carbon footprint. The silliness of Monty Python is predicated on the complete unimportance of the topic at hand - make that topic an important one, and it's no longer quite the same joke.
Just imagine for a moment that instead of people who wouldn't listen to 10/10's carbon reduction message, the film blew up people who didn't support traditional marriage. Would it still be funny like Monty Python?
Because of course, the only unbiased and honest people are those that agree with catastrophic AGW.
With that kind of basic premise, even legitimate investigations into behavior are going to be seen as witch hunts. The automatic assumption of good faith on your side and bad faith on the other side is what causes these kinds of things into escalating lawsuits - simply handing over the requested documents would've saved time, money, and apparently was impossible given the extreme level of distrust between the parties.
I guess I'd ask the following question of Mann's supporters - what evidence could possibly be uncovered by this investigation that would make it legitimate for you? If we got a hand written letter by Mann where he states "Those fools! I've completely faked my data, and they keep giving me more money, buahahaha!", would that exonerate Cuccinelli?
Ah yes, the "he's so good and respected he couldn't *possibly* have done anything wrong!"
http://www.thegwpf.org/gwpf-reports/1531-the-climategate-inquries.html
"The way in which Mann was exonerated proved extremely controversial and even neutral commentators appeared to be taken aback by some of the panel’s reasoning. Writing in The Atlantic, Clive Crook, widely seen as a neutral on the question of global warming, said:"
“The report...says, in effect, that Mann is a distinguished scholar, a successful raiser of research funding, a man admired by his peers – so any allegation of academic impropriety must be false...
Mann is asked if the allegations (well, one them) are true, and says no. His record is swooned over. Verdict: case dismissed with apologies that Mann has been put to such trouble.”"
Except politicians regulate themselves *and* they regulate corporations :)
Can you imagine if it was the other way around?
Fox and the henhouse and all...
Perhaps the difference is that *politicians* should be regulated, not corporations.
Regulation puts in place a mechanism for politicians to influence things - play ball, donate campaign money, and regulators will look favorably on you. Hire my niece for some cush job, and we can arrange a multi-billion dollar decision in your direction.
The simple problem is this - any given system will elicit certain types of behavior, and a system where government decides the success or failure of a business venture will elicit competition on a *political* level rather than a *value to consumer* level. Corporations spend billions of dollars *lobbying* instead of *innovating* because their continued success requires them to compete on a political level.
Now, can I specify a perfect system? Nope. But I'll still assert I can identify flaws in the one we currently have, and that we can as a people work towards rectifying them, stepwise.
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/wwf-and-greenpeace-as-well-funded-successful-modern-political-organisations/
272 million for greenpeace, and 487 million for WWF, *per year*. Subsidies for wind, solar, hybrid vehicles, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent in compliance with legislation like the Clean Air Act.
Now, perhaps not as much political power as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or AIG and General Motors, but almost zero? I think not.
I think the point being made by the GP is that if government was kept to its proper place, you wouldn't have favorable treatment, or government contracts. This point was made by Bastiat in the 1800s: http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/The_Law.pdf
When government has control over each and every industry, then the "success" of anyone engaging in those industries is just as much driven by how much value they provide, as how much political clout they wield. If anything our "best and strongest years" represented a transition from the wartime controlled economy to more liberty - to use that as a reason to return to a war economy or a 90% tax rate is to miss the point of the post-war prosperity we enjoyed.
At the end of the day, you've got to come up with some rationale for why you think a politician can provide more value for you than someone competing in a free market, if you're going to suggest that the government should rightfully be a primary driver of the economy. You're right to point out that both the commercial sector and government can be negative forces, but in end, in the commercial sector, providing value produces success, and in the government, political influence produces success. Which driver would you rather have?
Yeah, just had an interesting conversation at work about that - am I really willing to assert that each box run its own iptables process, or would I like to have some hardware router take care of that for me? In our case, we're looking at doing our own iptables because we can't get decent support from the guys in charge of the network hardware, but I think in general, we'd assert that having a firewall run interference for an entire subnet is a Good Thing(TM). Now granted, ipv6 doesn't mean I can't have NAT, but it seems that the assertion that *everyone* should be peers does have some other consequences.
Good question. Probably mostly because I've already got a backlog that'll take me months to get through :)
Now, at home, I actually disabled IPv6 because I was trying to diagnose some VPN issues (yes, I know, yet another hit against VPN technology :) ) - I suppose I could try going completely ipv6 behind my wireless router, but I guess I just haven't thought of it yet.
And I think you nailed it right there - because it's a slow thing, that will take only bits of money spread out over a lot of time, it's always going to be at the bottom of the things to do stack.
Actually, that's a really good point - and I think it's when that happens that we setup a worldwide ipv6 VPN :)
I'm all happy about the idea of ipv6, but as kludgy as ipv4 is, it's still working. Not pretty, not elegant, but workable - and I'm familiar with the ups and downs of how to keep it workable. ipv6, on the other hand, as pretty as it is, I just haven't seen any deployment large enough to convince me that there aren't unintended consequences - i mean, just imagine if malware didn't get stopped at the gates of each NAT it encountered, but instead had direct addressibility to everything in your local network? (yes, yes, I know, don't run windoze...words to live by)
I guess this whole thing kinda smells like the y2k thing - lots of worrying, but I'm not convinced that doomsday will really happen.
Which is why we have the VPN "kludges" on top :)
Yes, not exactly ideal, but I'll still assert that even with ipv6, you've still got "kludges" that obfuscate the fact that your network traversal isn't as simple as just knocking on a port on a local subnet. Once you're past that first switch, you may *think* you're on equal terms with your peer, but you're getting routed in a way that is distinctly different than if you were hitting a box on the local subnet, like it or not.
I guess I'm of the cynical opinion that if NAT wasn't "good enough", it would have been replaced already. As cool as it may seem to have an ip address for every screw and nail in my entire house, it just hasn't been nearly as important as the folk who have been playing with ipv6 thought.
Eventually, every network gets subdivided at some piece of equipment, be it a transparent bridge or router somewhere. The idea of being a "peer" is an imaginary one really - other than boxes plugged into the exact same switch or router on the same subnet, you're doing a network traversal somewhere. NAT makes this traversal more explicit, perhaps, but evil?
Hell, if you really want other "peers", there's all kinds of VPN stuff you can do that will effectively give you the same thing.
What I'm trying to say is that the naive application of thermodynamics don't apply. Let's do a few thought experiments:
1) broken digestive system - imagine a digestive system that simply passed all matter from the mouth directly through, and absorbed none of the nutrients. As the food squeezes through, it costs some energy, but the body doesn't get any energy from this incoming matter. In this case, the simple thermodynamic understanding is confounded by the fact that the calories must not only be *consumed* they must be digested and transferred to the body. Fiber is a good example of "calories in the mouth" != "calories presented to the body"
2) broken pancreas - imagine a pancreas that cannot produce insulin (type 1 diabetics). Without insulin, fatty acids cannot be fixed into fat cells. No matter how many calories go into the mouth, and are in fact digested and absorbed by the digestive system, they cannot be fixed into the fat cells.
3) maladaptive burn rate - imagine a system that over adapts to effective caloric intake, and dramatically decreases metabolism and energy use when in starvation mode. You decrease your caloric intake by 10%, but the system decreases energy use by 20% - even with the lower calories (assuming enough insulin present), you can gain weight.
There are all kinds of ways our body deals with calories. It can dump them in urine with ketones, or in feces without digesting them. Internal bacteria can consume them. It can build and repair tissues. It can generate extra heat. It can use them to activate muscles. It can store them in fat cells. Our body continually manages a fine balance of all of these through a complex system of hormonal balances. Simply measuring the amount of food going into the mouth, and the amount of time we use our muscles misses out on a whole host of other variables in the equation.
In short, obesity as we know it is not a problem with caloric intake in the mouth and muscle use, obesity is a problem of *fat accumulation*. Hormonal balances are upset, and the fat cells improperly store fat rather than releasing it as they usually do. Understanding the true root cause of the situation, we can then find an actual remediation - it's not about less calories, it's about less insulin, which means less blood sugar, which means less carbs.
And I sincerely apologize for that. I've got no stake in any low carb diet company, nor the slow burn fitness guy, but as an atheist, I have definitely gotten an appreciation for what it must feel like to be an evangelical christian trying to spread the word of god - apparently zealotry based on epiphany isn't something limited to christianity :)
I think for me, the fact that the simple "calories in, calories out" trope was something I *really* believed in, I mean second law of thermodynamics type of belief, when that belief was challenged, and the alternative hypothesis actually managed to explain situations that seemed inexplicable before, I felt what alcoholics refer to as "a moment of clarity". I suppose I have some naive sense that if only people learned what I learned, and saw what I saw, they'd have the same epiphany - but likely as not, most people just aren't interested in challenging their beliefs, and out of every 100 people who may read a comment of mine, maybe only 5 or 6 actually internalize anything.
So, yes, I can't help myself from railing against the "calories in, calories out" trope when I see it pop up, and you'll definitely notice it in my comment history, but it's a function of my own naive evangelism, not because I'm a shill for any particular product.
Anyway, good luck on your journey as well, and a pleasure to discuss the topic with you :)
Genetics is an enabling factor, not a causal one. Yes, you have to be standing in the impact zone of a large meteor in order to get squished by it, but it's the meteor that does the squishing, not the location you're standing in.
http://www.diabetesnet.com/diabetes_types/whatype.php
" Type 1, called IDDM (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus), now was recognized as an autoimmune disease that appeared primarily in childhood or adolescence. Near the final phases of the attack, the person stops producing insulin and requires injected insulin. At the time of diagnosis, such a person often has excessive thirst and urination, has lost a lot of weight, and has an extremely high blood sugar. This person is normal weight or thin when Type 1 diabetes starts and may stay relatively trim through life. Type 1 occurs in about 10% of all people who have diabetes. Treatment for this type revolves around adjusting the dosages and number of insulin injections to match diet and exercise"
I'll grant you it's cheap, but it's also particularly effective, and there is a real biochemical reason for it.
I'll challenge you to find *any* farmer that has successfully used protein and fat to fatten livestock, in the absence of carbohydrates - it simply doesn't work. You can blame the livestock for "getting full", but in the end, even if you force fed them, you simply can't fatten an animal without carbs.
A 40oz steak is going to fill up your stomach, but bloating is caused by water retention due to carbohydrate intake.
That's not true at all. Agriculture in the new world was significantly lower GI, and most indigenous peoples were primarily hunter gatherers. Check your sources.
http://www0.epinions.com/review/Merde_by_Lewin_Ralph_Books/content_16098954884
Considering an average of 200g of feces a day, for sure you're losing calories out that end. Add ketones in the urine (5 cal/gram), and you're talking a bunch of calories that don't get stored as fat. Again, basic biochemistry - fat does not get deposited unless you've got insulin around.
I agree, the whole "revolution" thing is overrated, but damn, it works. 30 minutes a week, and I keep getting stronger every week. You hit plateaus every once in a while, but it's great to stay strong without spending hours in the gym.
Well, quantify it - if you switched out 200g of what you currently eat for 200g of sugar, how many pounds would you expect to gain (keeping exercise constant)? Now, without switching out, how many extra calories do you think you'd have to eat in addition to gain that same amount of pounds.
Have you gotten a chance to listen to Mr. Taubes' lecture yet?
Wrong. Fat is only stored under the influence of insulin. Take a type 1 diabetic, who cannot produce insulin, and feed them all you want - they won't gain a pound.
Your body has many ways of dumping calories out of the system besides fat deposition - excrement and urine being the two obvious ones.
You're contradicting yourself there - obviously pure-fat or super-high fat feed would be the most efficient way of getting the maximum number of calories into their system - so why doesn't that work? Why do they "feel too full"? Could it be that in fact, carbohydrates promote fat deposition, and shunt energy into the fat cells, making the animals still hungry because the needs of their other cells for energy have been neglected?
I feel great. Not bloated, not overfull at all. I can eat a pound of salami, a 40 oz. steak, and feel just fine. Since I've restricted my carbohydrate intake, I simply don't feel bloated or overfull anymore.
One of the things I didn't understand clearly before when I did eat carbohydrates, was feeling bloated, overfull, but *starving*. I'd wake up at midnight, stuff myself with carrots, popcorn, and I'd feel like my stomach was bursting - but I'd still be hungry. Until I understood the metabolic path that the food was taking (shunted to fat cells thanks to insulin), and that in fact my muscles were starving, I was always confused by this.
Citation, please. A single case of ketosis falling into ketoacidosis, and cured by increasing carbohydrate intake will do. Ketosis is a healthy state, and doesn't cause liver or kidney damage, period.
I think you're missing the forest for the trees there - in every case, when a previously low-glycemic diet in a population was replaced by a high-glycemic diet (be it due to the introduction of sugar, flour, or simply the development of agriculture), health and wellness decreased. The question you should be asking is, "before the introduction of the high-glycemic western diet, why were rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases so low in native populations"?
You don't understand - I've increased my caloric intake by leaps and bounds. I probably get 5000 calories a day, and I was gaining weight on less than 2500 calories a day when eating carbohydrates.
Slow burn fitness. It's actually quite amazing. As an example of the muscle growth, I started off only being able to do two of the pushups (20 seconds per rep), and a
Did you actually check out the lecture? Total caloric intake and dietary cholesterol are completely irrelevant compared to glycemic index. This isn't a fad - this is basic biochemistry.
Think of it - what do you feed to animals to fatten them up? High calorie diets of very dense fats? Or do you feed them the sweetest carbs you can find?
Not sure what your primary language is, but your logic here is lacking - it's like saying "Cliff jumping is obviously a dangerous sport, but this does not mean that jumping is good for you - you still need to be under supervision". Ketosis is not a medical condition that requires supervision, period. It is the normal state of the human body, perverted in modern man by carbohydrate intake.
Now, if you still believe otherwise, cite me a single deleterious symptom of ketosis, or a single report of death due to ketosis.
The problem here is the visible and invisible damage - yes, there are only a certain portion of the population that will gain weight while eating carbohydrates, and it will be obvious to us visibly that they're having health problems. But the problems with heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other chronic diseases are in fact very important even to those who don't show outward signs.
Congratulations for you. I've done the same thing with unlimited caloric intake, only 30 minutes of exercise *per week*, just by keeping under 40g of carbs a day. Now that you've got two contrasting examples, how can you declare yourself proof that calories in/calories out is the most significant change?
Is it possible that the fact that you cut out the "simple carbs" was enough to make the difference in your glycemic index? Do you believe that you could change your diet to primarily candy and soda, but keep the same calorie intake, and still lose weight? If not, why not, since according to you calories matter most?
I believe your understanding of your own anecdotal experience isn't as thorough as you believe.
No, it doesn't. Carbohydrates, in general, raise blood sugar. Protein and fat do not.
Actually, insulin is triggered to tell your fat cells to hold onto fatty acids (rather than releasing them into the bloodstream), so that your cells use up the blood sugar currently in your bloodstream.
Actually, at this point, the fructose heads to the liver, which helps package up more fatty acids, which head out to your fat cells (which at this point, aren't releasing fatty acids, thanks to the insulin levels).
The double whammy that sucrose or HFCS gives you is due to it's composition of both glucose, and fructose. The fructose hits the liver, and the glucose triggers the insulin response. Between the liver packaging up more fatty acids for transport to the fat cells, and the insulin suppressing the release of fatty acids from your fat cells, you get fat cells that get fatter.
Now, in some portion of the population, although this creates some dangerous LDL running around in your bloodstream, it won't cause obesity - as soon as the insulin levels go down, the fat cells start releasing their fatty acids again. For the portion of the population that tends towards obesity, even when the insulin levels go down, the fat cells don't get the message - they don't start releasing their energy stores like they're supposed to.
So when you see a 400 pound fat man eating a pizza like he's starving, it's because he is - his fat cells are literally stealing energy from his other tissues, and not releasing it back into the bloodstream when they're supposed to.
Not if they're going to raise blood sugar levels. Being "complex" is no panacea for having a high glycemic index.
Tell that to the Inuit, or the Masai, who ate exclusively animal products before the introduction of western diets. You can't live without fat, and you can't live without protein, but you can live without carbs just fine.
BS. Fat and protein do not measurably raise blood sugar levels, period.
BS again. You're confusing ketosis with ketoacidosis.
Now, it seems you're of the school that believes the old trope "calories in, calories out" - watch this lecture, then get back to me: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216
The problem there is that whole wheat bread turns into blood sugar very quickly, orange juice comes with plenty of sugar without needing to add any, and whole oats turns into blood sugar very quickly. Regardless of added sugar, these foods are particularly *unhealthy*, even though we've been told they're good for us.
The key here is that HFCS is bad because it raises insulin levels. By the same token, anything that raises insulin levels is going to suffer from the same issues. Welcome to the wonderful world of carbohydrates!