Making all their data freely available is impossible, because they "misplaced" it.
Seriously, we've got mirrors of centos and maven that must be terabytes upon terabytes of ISOs...you think CRU has too much data for the world to handle? Really?
Mod parent up. Claiming exoneration at this point, or insisting that with enough context one can possibly explain the malfeasance behind the climategate emails, is wishful thinking and simply talking points handed out by realclimate.org.
Look, if all the CRU well wishers would just read the code itself (http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt), maybe your inner geek can overcome your outer AGW supporter. These guys have been cooking the numbers with crappy code for years, period. I've got more faith in the code quality of Duke Nuke'm Forever than the garbage these guys have been spewing.
Anyway, mod this troll/flamebait/whatever, but the parent deserves at least informative for quoting TFR.
Thank you for an interesting round of discussion:)
If I were to make a statement as to why agriculture was promoted, I think I would assert that the plants did it. "The Botany of Desire" touches on this, and cleverly swaps roles in such a way that it looks like plants domesticated humans.
...covered up by whitewash investigations that were less than a fig leaf, then, yeah, okay.
Now, just because this particular brand of bunghole is wrong on gays, doesn't mean he's wrong on the whole AGW fraud. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I'm not making the statement that agriculture was promoted for any particular purpose, I'm simply saying that the side effect was the creation of a ruling elite. It was most likely an unfortunate accident with wheat in the fertile crescent (see again, Jared Diamond), but the effects after the fact are fairly measurable, even if it is a value judgement about whether the trade off between freedom and technology was a "fair" one.
Agriculture forces one to be tied to a specific patch of ground, rather than being free to roam where the game is. A hunter gatherer can always just move on if harassed -> a farmer has too much invested to simply walk away. Put another way, having a large granary of your own makes you more vulnerable to theft than simply killing a meat animal every once in a while. While not designed to reduce freedom, de facto it does.
Insofar as scanty rainfall for hundreds of miles, this is certainly when the "gatherer" mode kicks in, but scanty rainfall doesn't happen overnight, and hundreds of miles are easily within the range of human transport. A farmer may have some real problems with scanty rainfall (since they can't just pack up their fields and move them), but for the hunter gatherer, unless they have made some arbitrary decision to stick to one piece of land, they'll just move on in plenty of time to follow the game.
Regarding the conflict of roaming bands of hunter gatherers, you're correct, this conflict is a byproduct of the freedoms afforded -> and also just as applicable to migrating farmers (in the case of scanty rainfall that you cite). More than that, the farmers are an awfully inviting target for the next roving band of hunter gatherers who have specialized in the killing of game, versus a population specialized in the digging of dirt. I refer you to Oppenheimer's "The State" for a more thorough discussion of that.
Hunting grounds are probably an order of magnitude larger than any agricultural fields, especially for migratory game. But in any case, it seems you can at least admit that the hunting grounds are bigger.
Since harvesting activities can generally be policed, there's little risk to the fields (mostly from animals, probably) - grabbing a stalk of corn before it's ready gives the thief little benefit. You really can't police hunting until after the fact, and it's probably easily an order of magnitude harder to force someone to hunt for you than to plow a field for you - the police following the hunter would probably scare game off.
You're definitely right about the fertility of soil, but a lot of that takes hundreds of years to manifest. Certainly the "fertile crescent" which provided the dawn of agriculture for us went through that process of boom and bust. Preventing game migration is a pretty sure way to kill them off - there are survival reasons to their movements.
Storage helps them survive during years of scarcity, but at the price of freedom. They become beholden to whoever controls the food supplies during the scarce years.
Now, the larger question as to whether the loss of individual freedom and the creation of a ruling class outweighs the benefits of technology and increased population density is arguable, of course. But that being said, it cannot be denied that the establishment of agriculture reduced health, created class based societies, centralized power and reduced individual freedoms.
I highly recommend to you Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" for a more thorough examination of the topic, though.
Until you invent refrigeration, you can't store the meat and centralize power. A granary can be controlled by a centralized government, and guarded by an elite against essentially a slave populace. Policing a large land area to prevent poaching just isn't feasible, but a couple of tough guys watching the granary is.
Additionally, the farmer is tied to the land -> whereas game may migrate. The response of a hunter-gatherer to a despot is simply to move away to find game somewhere else. A farmer is more or less stuck.
So yes, the invention of the ruling elite and a slave class was essentially a factor of agriculture. And although I'm certain you may find rare and isolated exceptions to this rule, in general, what drove us towards centralized governments of ruling elites was tying the laborer to the land.
Of course, as a bonus, the increased population density helped develop art and technology which we now enjoy today because of the broken backs of the underclass circa 10,000BC, but the trade off for that was damaged health due to carbohydrate intake and a political system which tends to denigrate individual freedom in favor of centralized control.
...all that bandwidth means you can run your own cloud right off of a tiny desktop at home. You'll have constant connectivity to your own personal server, backed up any way you want it, running any software you want, without any of that tasty vendor lockin. They'll try to do some software as a service crap, but Ubuntu 27.04 will have a bunch of tasty open source replacements for your streaming music/data/movies/etc/etc/etc.
You're right that not all carbs are created equal, but unless you're talking straight fiber (leafy greens, broccoli, etc), it's a difference between bad and really freaking bad. In any case, you have to keep whatever carbs you take in below a threshold level that spikes your blood sugar and therefore insulin. "Whole grain" will spike your insulin levels too, but you're correct, "sprouted" stuff is probably the least bad of all.
As an aside, did you know one of the reasons they kept white flour on the sailing ships of empire in the old days was because rats would avoid it -> you figure if a rat won't eat something, maybe humans shouldn't eat it either.
Not sure about the calculations of wild game animals versus agriculture, though. Reports from Lewis and Clark's journey indicated game was incredibly abundant. I'll grant you that you're not going to have small game animals sustain a large modern city, but in serious wilderness, especially if you have large animals to hunt, you might have a system that is competitive with medieval agricultural village. The real drivers for agriculture were control -> a ruling elite can only really exist if you have agriculture. And once you get control as a ruling elite, and can muster a larger force than any band of hunter gatherers, the beginnings of empire are pretty much inevitable.
I highly suggest Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and his commentary on geographic determinism to you.
Apologies for misunderstanding your statement, I believe I get your point now.
That being said, hunted meat has plenty of energy, but can't be stored and therefore controlled by an elite ruling class the same way grains can. Granted, this poor nutrition also has the side effect of increasing population density and providing a storable surplus to allow for specialist classes (which helps leads us to technology, etc, etc, as per "Guns, Germs and Steel"), but now that we've made it past the technological stage, it seems like a poor idea to continue doing harm to ourselves with a carbohydrate laden diet.
It's certainly time to put down the cereals, grains, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, potatoes, and other starches, and start picking up protein and fat. I'm not sure what the consequence would be of eating a healthy diet (do we have enough grazing land to support enough meat animals? can we use the grains we currently have to raise healthy meats, or is it better to have grass-fed beef?), but if given the choice between raising rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases, maybe we should be paying some serious attention to how we can convert our population from a carb based diet to a meat and fat based diet.
Wrong. Modern man evolved mainly as a scavenging meat eater, and carbohydrates (and their attendant detrimental health effects) were only introduced a mere 10,000 years ago. Our bodies were never meant to eat anywhere near the carbohydrate levels typical today, and the invention of agriculture is arguably one of the worst things ever to happen to human health.
Insofar as the "outbreak of obesity", it's directly related to the low-fat diet and exercise dogma fed to us since the 1970s. Their solution to the heart disease problem has actually caused more heart disease than ever, as well as the diabetes and obesity epidemics.
This isn't about bashing, it's about reality -> carbohydrates are the cause of the vast majority of chronic diseases we suffer in the modern world. Again, google for "gary taubes berkeley", watch the video, and then tell me what you think.
Are you kidding me? India serves as a classic example, with chronic diseases much more prevalent in areas where they have high carbohydrate intake (including obesity and diabetes). And haven't you ever met an italian mom who is serving pasta? Was she skinny?
Now granted, under starvation rations, some of the negative effects of carbohydrate intake can be masked, but the basic biology of insulin and its response to blood sugar, and the effect that has on what have been coined the "diseases of civilization" is unmistakable.
Wrong. Obesity is not about calorie surplus at all, it is about insulin levels.
Fat cells hold onto fat under the influence of insulin.
Insulin levels are raised by blood sugar levels.
Blood sugar levels are raised by carbohydrates.
This is basic biology, and anyone who has studied the Kreb's cycle will acknowledge this. If you have a calorie deficit, but high carbohydrate levels, your insulin levels will still be raised, and people with insulin resistance (75% of the population by most counts at some level), your fat cells will hold onto the fat, even though it starves your muscles.
It's not the calorie that counts, it what the body does in response to that particular calorie. In the case of carbohydrates, the response is to raise blood sugar levels, raise insulin levels, and make fat cells steal energy from your blood stream.
Seriously, google "gary taubes berkeley", watch his lecture, then come back and reply.
Rather than looking at calories and sodium, they should be looking at carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the root cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. That happy meal is just fine and dandy if you skip the soda, fries, and the bun.
So, yeah, maybe this would be a great idea if they targeted the right things. Apparently the cereal and grain lobby still rules the roost though.
For a more thorough dissertation on the subject of the evil of carbohydrates, google for "gary taubes berkeley". His lecture should be required viewing for anyone thinking about legislating diet.
I wonder how the guys who took over Terry's job feel now. I'd be looking for alternative employment at this point -> like maybe a ditch digger or something that just might not get you pooched by the judicial system.
Ah, the precautionary principle -> use what little you know, just in case you might be right.
The problem with that, of course, is that there are often dire consequences for getting it wrong with the limited information you have. For example, based on a "7 country study" (when 21 countries were actually available) Ancel Keys decided that dietary fat might cause heart disease, and kicked off the low-fat/low-calorie craze of the past 30 years that has caused epidemics of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases (google "gary taubes berkeley").
A lot of the work now in climate is being done on the big things -> proxies, forcing, radiative balance, UHI, the surface record, ocean oscillations. Since any one of these things and certainly the combination of these things can completely change the picture. Even the IPCC has error bars that when shown, are ridiculously huge.
If the dip in temperature in the 50s-70s was human caused, should we once again cause that cooling to fight our warming?
Furthermore, if aerosols such as SO2 are so localized, and they're only generated over land, doesn't that ignore the 75% of the planet that is water?
The fact of the matter is that we don't have a any reliable proxies for the past 100 years. We've only had satellites up for 30 years, and our surface record is incredibly unreliable, even today. We barely have a sea monitoring network, and the data problems (transparency, backup, traceability) are legion.
We should be humble enough to realize that we don't have good data sets for climate (even modern ones have plenty of problems), and our ignorance greatly outweighs our knowledge at this point. To gain more knowledge, we need to do more science, which means coming up with falsifiable hypotheses so we can learn.
As noble and talented as solar astronomers are, there is still plenty for us to learn about the sun. Just this past year they've discovered more subtlety in the magnetic currents than they had anticipated. Asserting that we have ignorance is humility, not putting the cart before the horse. Asserting that we know everything, and that the "debate is over" is arrogance.
"The plateau is accounted for by natural variability just like in other similar dips in the record."
Now this is just blatant hypocrisy -> why should dips be considered "natural" but increases be considered "man-made"?
" I don't know of any SO2 proxies and I'm not sure they are available."
Which means that although industrial aerosol cooling may be possible, there really is no falsifiable hypothesis here yet. Design an experiment that would falsify the hypothesis, and then you're doing real science. I would imagine that the real problem here would be a significant lack of data for historical periods -> we've only had satellites up to observe more details for the past 30 years, hardly enough to generate a robust record.
"observed changes in solar activity have not been large enough to account for all of the observed warming"
Which could mean that we are simply unable to observe properly at this point in time. It doesn't mean that the alternative is human CO2 emissions.
"If the 30 year temperature trend line becomes negative and it's not caused by something like a major volcanic eruption then I could accede that AGW is in error."
Excellent. Talk to you in 15 years (since even a plateau at this point is unaccounted for given rising CO2 levels):)
"The cooling trend (1944-1965 by my reckoning) can be explained at least partially by the increase in industrial activity releasing aerosols, particularly SO2 that overrode the warming signal from increasing CO2."
An interesting hypothesis. Do you know of any proxies to SO2 concentrations that we could map backwards in time?
"Science is coming up with a hypothesis, gathering data, testing the hypothesis, AND REPEATING IT. You don't "find problems". You come up with an idea and you test it for validity. Then you make sure OTHERS can test your hypothesis, independently, to further verify your hypothesis. If this is done enough times and validated each time, you have a theory."
I think what you're writing is not what you mean to say. The whole point of developing repeatable experiments is to find problems -> science is not a process of finding more evidence that fits your theory, it's the relentless process of searching for any evidence that could contradict your theory.
For example, you have a theory that all swans are white. Finding 1000 white swans leads you to posit this theory. From here, searching for more white swans isn't going to help your theory any -> if you search for only white swans, and find 900,000 more white swans, you've added very little to the robustness of your theory. On the other hand, if you spend a whole bunch of time looking for just one black swan, and don't find it, you're getting warmer. Find that one black swan, though, and the theory goes poof.
Asserting that you have 10 proxies that all agree very closely, then one of them starts "disagreeing" is not an excuse to ignore the "disagreement" -> it's a clarion call to start questioning the other 9 proxies.
Oh, and BTW, citing peer review for AGW, when most of the AGW reviewers never even asked for the data behind the papers (Jones, et. al), doesn't help your cause.
"Natural variation? Can you show this? Can you show definitively that additional CO2 has no impact on global temperatures? Basic physics would seem to indicate otherwise. I also suppose acid rain and ozone depletion were "natural variation" as well."
Natural variation is the null hypothesis in this case -> the burden of proof is to show that a) the "additional CO2" is generated by man, and b) that the "additional CO2" is the primary driver of temperatures. Just because we cannot clearly identify a detailed alternative hypothesis does NOT mean that your hypothesis is true.
Oh, and google "acid rain myths" and "ozone layer myths". The answer is yes, they were natural variation.
"And even if it were natural variation, how does that make things any better?"
Simple - it means we should spend more time on adaptation than prevention of something we cannot prevent. It's like misdiagnosing the reason for automobile fatalities -> if you think it's caused by weather conditions, which may or may not have a small perceptible effect, and you work your butt off trying to stabilize weather conditions, you're going to miss the simple things like seatbelts and airbags.
"Until that time, I will continue to follow the scientific consensus."
Which is your right, of course. I just wonder how many scientists will have to "non-consent" for you to finally change your mind. 100? 10000? 10%? 50%?
Do you even know how many scientists there are, and how many of them believe in your "consensus"? My guess is that this is simply a repeated sound bite, but I could be wrong.
1) You're asking me for a theory - not defending your own by making it falsifiable. (That being said, CO2 emissions lag temperature changes, as it is outgassed from the oceans at a rate dependent upon the temperature, which is primarily driven by solar activity, FWIW.)
2) 30 years, fine. So by that argument, are you willing to accede that AGW is in error if we continue to increase CO2 emissions over the next 15 years, and still have lower temperatures? Or if we can find any post-industrial revolution period of 30 years where CO2 was increasing but global temperatures were decreasing (for example, 1935 - 1965)?
I'm not saying making up a good falsifiable hypothesis is easy by any means. But it is the only way to do science.
Well said. Argument by sound bite/slogan/talking point really doesn't advance either understanding or knowledge.
One of the most frustrating things for me is the incredible room left for misinterpretation with just even some of the basics, like "what is the current temperature of the globe RIGHT NOW". The measurements and adjustments to temperature of the surface record make for a final "global temperature" value that is difficult to describe, and even harder to agree upon. A good example of the really basic definitions at the root of disagreements (in this case, the definition of "average" temperature") can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjPJnEtfUE
"In fact, it could be a lot more telling when a reliable proxy suddenly starts becoming unreliable."
How can you assert it's a reliable proxy when it "suddenly" becomes unreliable? More to the point, explain to me how you would differentiate between a "good proxy gone bad" and a "bad proxy gone bad" - given that correlation earlier might either be a fluke or an indication that other matching proxies are also bad.
"Even if, for the sake of argument, you threw out Briffa's work entirely. That still does not negate the thousands of other research papers, models, data sets, etc. that have nothing to do with tree rings."
That's called cherry picking. Throwing out data that does not agree with your hypothesis, and saving data that does agree with your hypothesis is not science. Science isn't done by thousands of confirming experiments -> it's done by designing just one experiment that shows a problem.
"Maybe it will turn out that there really is a global Illuminati backed scheme that through climate scientists they are working to take over the world."
Or maybe it will turn out that all the variation we've seen is simply natural, and ascribing man made origins to it was simply wishful thinking combined with a confirmation bias. No conspiracy needs to exist for AGW to be wrong.
"A scientist says "maybe the climate isn't changing" and investigates by looking for arguments. A denier insists the climate can't possibly be changing and anyone who disagrees is part of a massive conspiracy and writes analogies and syllogisms and rhetoric."
Actually, a scientist should say, "maybe the climate is changing due to man's activity, but if I find data , and , it would disprove my theory". Science is the relentless skepticism of one's own ideas.
A "denier" who examines the data, finds flaws, presents them (Steve McIntyre), but is then charged with being a part of some massive oil conspiracy and attacked ad hominem for being a "denier" is a more valuable to the process of discovering truth than an AGW cheerleader.
There is plenty enough reason for even lay people to be skeptical of the arguments made for AGW, even without advanced degrees in physics or math. The first clue is when people start saying "the debate is over", but there has been sufficient reason for even a high school drop out to question the wild assertions made. Granted, a lot of these are filtered through a simplistic press that sensationalizes and exaggerates (turning 20cm of sea level rise into 20m, for example), but many of the high institutions worshipped by AGW supporters (IPPC, CRU, etc) have long ago turned the corner from scientific investigation to PR machines trying to push a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps the real problem here is that we can all agree that these hypotheses may be possible, but we just can't all get our heads together on how big the error bars are. Asserting complete confidence in something that is obviously limited by measurement and calculation accuracy seems to be a poor way to convince people your theory is true.
"Now in order to get an accurate picture, and indeed, to even use the proxy it has to "check out" with all the rest of data. If a proposed proxy doesn't match (within reason) the other data then it is tossed out"
That's classic confirmation bias. Throwing out data when it doesn't match your preconceived notions (as evidence by data you collected previously) is cherry-picking.
If a proposed proxy doesn't match, it deserves further investigation. Furthermore, if a proposed proxy has a discontinuity (matching for a long time, then suddenly unmatching, like Briffa's tree-rings), you cannot just throw out the data from that series that you don't like - the whole series is suspect (and the fact that other proxies match it for historical periods may actually cast doubt on their accuracy).
1) Your statement of falsification of the "anthropogenic part" is asking to prove a negative, which is not possible. The burden of proof is upon the affirmative. You can build a good theory of anthropogenic warming by asserting that it is falsifiable by an increase in CO2 but a decrease in temperatures, or asserting it is falsifiable by the observation of other planets without humans on them do not show the same sorts of temperature increases/decreases at the same time earth does, or asserting that it is falsifiable by any historical evidence of similar hot and cold periods before large scale industrial activity on the planet.
Maybe if you were more specific in your statement instead of just saying "showing", you'd be closer to an actual scientific hypothesis.
2) Define a "CSP". If it's anything like 15 years, we've seen global cooling since 1998. One of the big problems that AGW supporters fall into is asserting that a single event like Katrina, or a decrease in arctic sea ice for one year represents an affirmation of their hypothesis, yet denying contrary evidence like the coldest winter on record, or increasing arctic sea ice.
I guess we could put it this way - ignorance of all of the natural variability factors that determine climate does not mean that the parts we are ignorant of are created by man. All too often, AGW supporters assert that every joule of energy must be accounted for by the strictest measure, or their assertions must be true. This is not a scientific hypothesis, it's "heads I win, tails you lose".
Slashdot Mirror
Making all their data freely available is impossible, because they "misplaced" it.
Seriously, we've got mirrors of centos and maven that must be terabytes upon terabytes of ISOs...you think CRU has too much data for the world to handle? Really?
Mod parent up. Claiming exoneration at this point, or insisting that with enough context one can possibly explain the malfeasance behind the climategate emails, is wishful thinking and simply talking points handed out by realclimate.org.
Look, if all the CRU well wishers would just read the code itself (http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/HARRY_READ_ME.txt), maybe your inner geek can overcome your outer AGW supporter. These guys have been cooking the numbers with crappy code for years, period. I've got more faith in the code quality of Duke Nuke'm Forever than the garbage these guys have been spewing.
Anyway, mod this troll/flamebait/whatever, but the parent deserves at least informative for quoting TFR.
Thank you for an interesting round of discussion :)
If I were to make a statement as to why agriculture was promoted, I think I would assert that the plants did it. "The Botany of Desire" touches on this, and cleverly swaps roles in such a way that it looks like plants domesticated humans.
...covered up by whitewash investigations that were less than a fig leaf, then, yeah, okay.
Now, just because this particular brand of bunghole is wrong on gays, doesn't mean he's wrong on the whole AGW fraud. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I'm not making the statement that agriculture was promoted for any particular purpose, I'm simply saying that the side effect was the creation of a ruling elite. It was most likely an unfortunate accident with wheat in the fertile crescent (see again, Jared Diamond), but the effects after the fact are fairly measurable, even if it is a value judgement about whether the trade off between freedom and technology was a "fair" one.
Agriculture forces one to be tied to a specific patch of ground, rather than being free to roam where the game is. A hunter gatherer can always just move on if harassed -> a farmer has too much invested to simply walk away. Put another way, having a large granary of your own makes you more vulnerable to theft than simply killing a meat animal every once in a while. While not designed to reduce freedom, de facto it does.
Insofar as scanty rainfall for hundreds of miles, this is certainly when the "gatherer" mode kicks in, but scanty rainfall doesn't happen overnight, and hundreds of miles are easily within the range of human transport. A farmer may have some real problems with scanty rainfall (since they can't just pack up their fields and move them), but for the hunter gatherer, unless they have made some arbitrary decision to stick to one piece of land, they'll just move on in plenty of time to follow the game.
Regarding the conflict of roaming bands of hunter gatherers, you're correct, this conflict is a byproduct of the freedoms afforded -> and also just as applicable to migrating farmers (in the case of scanty rainfall that you cite). More than that, the farmers are an awfully inviting target for the next roving band of hunter gatherers who have specialized in the killing of game, versus a population specialized in the digging of dirt. I refer you to Oppenheimer's "The State" for a more thorough discussion of that.
Hunting grounds are probably an order of magnitude larger than any agricultural fields, especially for migratory game. But in any case, it seems you can at least admit that the hunting grounds are bigger.
Since harvesting activities can generally be policed, there's little risk to the fields (mostly from animals, probably) - grabbing a stalk of corn before it's ready gives the thief little benefit. You really can't police hunting until after the fact, and it's probably easily an order of magnitude harder to force someone to hunt for you than to plow a field for you - the police following the hunter would probably scare game off.
You're definitely right about the fertility of soil, but a lot of that takes hundreds of years to manifest. Certainly the "fertile crescent" which provided the dawn of agriculture for us went through that process of boom and bust. Preventing game migration is a pretty sure way to kill them off - there are survival reasons to their movements.
Storage helps them survive during years of scarcity, but at the price of freedom. They become beholden to whoever controls the food supplies during the scarce years.
Now, the larger question as to whether the loss of individual freedom and the creation of a ruling class outweighs the benefits of technology and increased population density is arguable, of course. But that being said, it cannot be denied that the establishment of agriculture reduced health, created class based societies, centralized power and reduced individual freedoms.
I highly recommend to you Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" for a more thorough examination of the topic, though.
Until you invent refrigeration, you can't store the meat and centralize power. A granary can be controlled by a centralized government, and guarded by an elite against essentially a slave populace. Policing a large land area to prevent poaching just isn't feasible, but a couple of tough guys watching the granary is.
Additionally, the farmer is tied to the land -> whereas game may migrate. The response of a hunter-gatherer to a despot is simply to move away to find game somewhere else. A farmer is more or less stuck.
So yes, the invention of the ruling elite and a slave class was essentially a factor of agriculture. And although I'm certain you may find rare and isolated exceptions to this rule, in general, what drove us towards centralized governments of ruling elites was tying the laborer to the land.
Of course, as a bonus, the increased population density helped develop art and technology which we now enjoy today because of the broken backs of the underclass circa 10,000BC, but the trade off for that was damaged health due to carbohydrate intake and a political system which tends to denigrate individual freedom in favor of centralized control.
...all that bandwidth means you can run your own cloud right off of a tiny desktop at home. You'll have constant connectivity to your own personal server, backed up any way you want it, running any software you want, without any of that tasty vendor lockin. They'll try to do some software as a service crap, but Ubuntu 27.04 will have a bunch of tasty open source replacements for your streaming music/data/movies/etc/etc/etc.
You're right that not all carbs are created equal, but unless you're talking straight fiber (leafy greens, broccoli, etc), it's a difference between bad and really freaking bad. In any case, you have to keep whatever carbs you take in below a threshold level that spikes your blood sugar and therefore insulin. "Whole grain" will spike your insulin levels too, but you're correct, "sprouted" stuff is probably the least bad of all.
As an aside, did you know one of the reasons they kept white flour on the sailing ships of empire in the old days was because rats would avoid it -> you figure if a rat won't eat something, maybe humans shouldn't eat it either.
Not sure about the calculations of wild game animals versus agriculture, though. Reports from Lewis and Clark's journey indicated game was incredibly abundant. I'll grant you that you're not going to have small game animals sustain a large modern city, but in serious wilderness, especially if you have large animals to hunt, you might have a system that is competitive with medieval agricultural village. The real drivers for agriculture were control -> a ruling elite can only really exist if you have agriculture. And once you get control as a ruling elite, and can muster a larger force than any band of hunter gatherers, the beginnings of empire are pretty much inevitable.
I highly suggest Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and his commentary on geographic determinism to you.
Apologies for misunderstanding your statement, I believe I get your point now.
That being said, hunted meat has plenty of energy, but can't be stored and therefore controlled by an elite ruling class the same way grains can. Granted, this poor nutrition also has the side effect of increasing population density and providing a storable surplus to allow for specialist classes (which helps leads us to technology, etc, etc, as per "Guns, Germs and Steel"), but now that we've made it past the technological stage, it seems like a poor idea to continue doing harm to ourselves with a carbohydrate laden diet.
It's certainly time to put down the cereals, grains, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, potatoes, and other starches, and start picking up protein and fat. I'm not sure what the consequence would be of eating a healthy diet (do we have enough grazing land to support enough meat animals? can we use the grains we currently have to raise healthy meats, or is it better to have grass-fed beef?), but if given the choice between raising rates of cancer, diabetes, obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases, maybe we should be paying some serious attention to how we can convert our population from a carb based diet to a meat and fat based diet.
Wrong. Modern man evolved mainly as a scavenging meat eater, and carbohydrates (and their attendant detrimental health effects) were only introduced a mere 10,000 years ago. Our bodies were never meant to eat anywhere near the carbohydrate levels typical today, and the invention of agriculture is arguably one of the worst things ever to happen to human health.
Insofar as the "outbreak of obesity", it's directly related to the low-fat diet and exercise dogma fed to us since the 1970s. Their solution to the heart disease problem has actually caused more heart disease than ever, as well as the diabetes and obesity epidemics.
This isn't about bashing, it's about reality -> carbohydrates are the cause of the vast majority of chronic diseases we suffer in the modern world. Again, google for "gary taubes berkeley", watch the video, and then tell me what you think.
Are you kidding me? India serves as a classic example, with chronic diseases much more prevalent in areas where they have high carbohydrate intake (including obesity and diabetes). And haven't you ever met an italian mom who is serving pasta? Was she skinny?
Now granted, under starvation rations, some of the negative effects of carbohydrate intake can be masked, but the basic biology of insulin and its response to blood sugar, and the effect that has on what have been coined the "diseases of civilization" is unmistakable.
Wrong. Obesity is not about calorie surplus at all, it is about insulin levels.
Fat cells hold onto fat under the influence of insulin.
Insulin levels are raised by blood sugar levels.
Blood sugar levels are raised by carbohydrates.
This is basic biology, and anyone who has studied the Kreb's cycle will acknowledge this. If you have a calorie deficit, but high carbohydrate levels, your insulin levels will still be raised, and people with insulin resistance (75% of the population by most counts at some level), your fat cells will hold onto the fat, even though it starves your muscles.
It's not the calorie that counts, it what the body does in response to that particular calorie. In the case of carbohydrates, the response is to raise blood sugar levels, raise insulin levels, and make fat cells steal energy from your blood stream.
Seriously, google "gary taubes berkeley", watch his lecture, then come back and reply.
Rather than looking at calories and sodium, they should be looking at carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are the root cause of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases. That happy meal is just fine and dandy if you skip the soda, fries, and the bun.
So, yeah, maybe this would be a great idea if they targeted the right things. Apparently the cereal and grain lobby still rules the roost though.
For a more thorough dissertation on the subject of the evil of carbohydrates, google for "gary taubes berkeley". His lecture should be required viewing for anyone thinking about legislating diet.
I wonder how the guys who took over Terry's job feel now. I'd be looking for alternative employment at this point -> like maybe a ditch digger or something that just might not get you pooched by the judicial system.
Talk about setting a dangerous precedent.
Ah, the precautionary principle -> use what little you know, just in case you might be right.
The problem with that, of course, is that there are often dire consequences for getting it wrong with the limited information you have. For example, based on a "7 country study" (when 21 countries were actually available) Ancel Keys decided that dietary fat might cause heart disease, and kicked off the low-fat/low-calorie craze of the past 30 years that has caused epidemics of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other chronic diseases (google "gary taubes berkeley").
A lot of the work now in climate is being done on the big things -> proxies, forcing, radiative balance, UHI, the surface record, ocean oscillations. Since any one of these things and certainly the combination of these things can completely change the picture. Even the IPCC has error bars that when shown, are ridiculously huge.
If the dip in temperature in the 50s-70s was human caused, should we once again cause that cooling to fight our warming?
Furthermore, if aerosols such as SO2 are so localized, and they're only generated over land, doesn't that ignore the 75% of the planet that is water?
The fact of the matter is that we don't have a any reliable proxies for the past 100 years. We've only had satellites up for 30 years, and our surface record is incredibly unreliable, even today. We barely have a sea monitoring network, and the data problems (transparency, backup, traceability) are legion.
We should be humble enough to realize that we don't have good data sets for climate (even modern ones have plenty of problems), and our ignorance greatly outweighs our knowledge at this point. To gain more knowledge, we need to do more science, which means coming up with falsifiable hypotheses so we can learn.
As noble and talented as solar astronomers are, there is still plenty for us to learn about the sun. Just this past year they've discovered more subtlety in the magnetic currents than they had anticipated. Asserting that we have ignorance is humility, not putting the cart before the horse. Asserting that we know everything, and that the "debate is over" is arrogance.
"The plateau is accounted for by natural variability just like in other similar dips in the record."
Now this is just blatant hypocrisy -> why should dips be considered "natural" but increases be considered "man-made"?
" I don't know of any SO2 proxies and I'm not sure they are available."
Which means that although industrial aerosol cooling may be possible, there really is no falsifiable hypothesis here yet. Design an experiment that would falsify the hypothesis, and then you're doing real science. I would imagine that the real problem here would be a significant lack of data for historical periods -> we've only had satellites up to observe more details for the past 30 years, hardly enough to generate a robust record.
"observed changes in solar activity have not been large enough to account for all of the observed warming"
Which could mean that we are simply unable to observe properly at this point in time. It doesn't mean that the alternative is human CO2 emissions.
"If the 30 year temperature trend line becomes negative and it's not caused by something like a major volcanic eruption then I could accede that AGW is in error."
Excellent. Talk to you in 15 years (since even a plateau at this point is unaccounted for given rising CO2 levels) :)
"The cooling trend (1944-1965 by my reckoning) can be explained at least partially by the increase in industrial activity releasing aerosols, particularly SO2 that overrode the warming signal from increasing CO2."
An interesting hypothesis. Do you know of any proxies to SO2 concentrations that we could map backwards in time?
"Science is coming up with a hypothesis, gathering data, testing the hypothesis, AND REPEATING IT. You don't "find problems". You come up with an idea and you test it for validity. Then you make sure OTHERS can test your hypothesis, independently, to further verify your hypothesis. If this is done enough times and validated each time, you have a theory."
I think what you're writing is not what you mean to say. The whole point of developing repeatable experiments is to find problems -> science is not a process of finding more evidence that fits your theory, it's the relentless process of searching for any evidence that could contradict your theory.
For example, you have a theory that all swans are white. Finding 1000 white swans leads you to posit this theory. From here, searching for more white swans isn't going to help your theory any -> if you search for only white swans, and find 900,000 more white swans, you've added very little to the robustness of your theory. On the other hand, if you spend a whole bunch of time looking for just one black swan, and don't find it, you're getting warmer. Find that one black swan, though, and the theory goes poof.
Asserting that you have 10 proxies that all agree very closely, then one of them starts "disagreeing" is not an excuse to ignore the "disagreement" -> it's a clarion call to start questioning the other 9 proxies.
Oh, and BTW, citing peer review for AGW, when most of the AGW reviewers never even asked for the data behind the papers (Jones, et. al), doesn't help your cause.
"Natural variation? Can you show this? Can you show definitively that additional CO2 has no impact on global temperatures? Basic physics would seem to indicate otherwise. I also suppose acid rain and ozone depletion were "natural variation" as well."
Natural variation is the null hypothesis in this case -> the burden of proof is to show that a) the "additional CO2" is generated by man, and b) that the "additional CO2" is the primary driver of temperatures. Just because we cannot clearly identify a detailed alternative hypothesis does NOT mean that your hypothesis is true.
Oh, and google "acid rain myths" and "ozone layer myths". The answer is yes, they were natural variation.
"And even if it were natural variation, how does that make things any better?"
Simple - it means we should spend more time on adaptation than prevention of something we cannot prevent. It's like misdiagnosing the reason for automobile fatalities -> if you think it's caused by weather conditions, which may or may not have a small perceptible effect, and you work your butt off trying to stabilize weather conditions, you're going to miss the simple things like seatbelts and airbags.
"Until that time, I will continue to follow the scientific consensus."
Which is your right, of course. I just wonder how many scientists will have to "non-consent" for you to finally change your mind. 100? 10000? 10%? 50%?
Do you even know how many scientists there are, and how many of them believe in your "consensus"? My guess is that this is simply a repeated sound bite, but I could be wrong.
1) You're asking me for a theory - not defending your own by making it falsifiable. (That being said, CO2 emissions lag temperature changes, as it is outgassed from the oceans at a rate dependent upon the temperature, which is primarily driven by solar activity, FWIW.)
2) 30 years, fine. So by that argument, are you willing to accede that AGW is in error if we continue to increase CO2 emissions over the next 15 years, and still have lower temperatures? Or if we can find any post-industrial revolution period of 30 years where CO2 was increasing but global temperatures were decreasing (for example, 1935 - 1965)?
I'm not saying making up a good falsifiable hypothesis is easy by any means. But it is the only way to do science.
Well said. Argument by sound bite/slogan/talking point really doesn't advance either understanding or knowledge.
One of the most frustrating things for me is the incredible room left for misinterpretation with just even some of the basics, like "what is the current temperature of the globe RIGHT NOW". The measurements and adjustments to temperature of the surface record make for a final "global temperature" value that is difficult to describe, and even harder to agree upon. A good example of the really basic definitions at the root of disagreements (in this case, the definition of "average" temperature") can be seen here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjPJnEtfUE
"In fact, it could be a lot more telling when a reliable proxy suddenly starts becoming unreliable."
How can you assert it's a reliable proxy when it "suddenly" becomes unreliable? More to the point, explain to me how you would differentiate between a "good proxy gone bad" and a "bad proxy gone bad" - given that correlation earlier might either be a fluke or an indication that other matching proxies are also bad.
"Even if, for the sake of argument, you threw out Briffa's work entirely. That still does not negate the thousands of other research papers, models, data sets, etc. that have nothing to do with tree rings."
That's called cherry picking. Throwing out data that does not agree with your hypothesis, and saving data that does agree with your hypothesis is not science. Science isn't done by thousands of confirming experiments -> it's done by designing just one experiment that shows a problem.
"Maybe it will turn out that there really is a global Illuminati backed scheme that through climate scientists they are working to take over the world."
Or maybe it will turn out that all the variation we've seen is simply natural, and ascribing man made origins to it was simply wishful thinking combined with a confirmation bias. No conspiracy needs to exist for AGW to be wrong.
"A scientist says "maybe the climate isn't changing" and investigates by looking for arguments. A denier insists the climate can't possibly be changing and anyone who disagrees is part of a massive conspiracy and writes analogies and syllogisms and rhetoric."
Actually, a scientist should say, "maybe the climate is changing due to man's activity, but if I find data , and , it would disprove my theory". Science is the relentless skepticism of one's own ideas.
A "denier" who examines the data, finds flaws, presents them (Steve McIntyre), but is then charged with being a part of some massive oil conspiracy and attacked ad hominem for being a "denier" is a more valuable to the process of discovering truth than an AGW cheerleader.
There is plenty enough reason for even lay people to be skeptical of the arguments made for AGW, even without advanced degrees in physics or math. The first clue is when people start saying "the debate is over", but there has been sufficient reason for even a high school drop out to question the wild assertions made. Granted, a lot of these are filtered through a simplistic press that sensationalizes and exaggerates (turning 20cm of sea level rise into 20m, for example), but many of the high institutions worshipped by AGW supporters (IPPC, CRU, etc) have long ago turned the corner from scientific investigation to PR machines trying to push a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps the real problem here is that we can all agree that these hypotheses may be possible, but we just can't all get our heads together on how big the error bars are. Asserting complete confidence in something that is obviously limited by measurement and calculation accuracy seems to be a poor way to convince people your theory is true.
"Now in order to get an accurate picture, and indeed, to even use the proxy it has to "check out" with all the rest of data. If a proposed proxy doesn't match (within reason) the other data then it is tossed out"
That's classic confirmation bias. Throwing out data when it doesn't match your preconceived notions (as evidence by data you collected previously) is cherry-picking.
If a proposed proxy doesn't match, it deserves further investigation. Furthermore, if a proposed proxy has a discontinuity (matching for a long time, then suddenly unmatching, like Briffa's tree-rings), you cannot just throw out the data from that series that you don't like - the whole series is suspect (and the fact that other proxies match it for historical periods may actually cast doubt on their accuracy).
A few points -
1) Your statement of falsification of the "anthropogenic part" is asking to prove a negative, which is not possible. The burden of proof is upon the affirmative. You can build a good theory of anthropogenic warming by asserting that it is falsifiable by an increase in CO2 but a decrease in temperatures, or asserting it is falsifiable by the observation of other planets without humans on them do not show the same sorts of temperature increases/decreases at the same time earth does, or asserting that it is falsifiable by any historical evidence of similar hot and cold periods before large scale industrial activity on the planet.
Maybe if you were more specific in your statement instead of just saying "showing", you'd be closer to an actual scientific hypothesis.
2) Define a "CSP". If it's anything like 15 years, we've seen global cooling since 1998. One of the big problems that AGW supporters fall into is asserting that a single event like Katrina, or a decrease in arctic sea ice for one year represents an affirmation of their hypothesis, yet denying contrary evidence like the coldest winter on record, or increasing arctic sea ice.
I guess we could put it this way - ignorance of all of the natural variability factors that determine climate does not mean that the parts we are ignorant of are created by man. All too often, AGW supporters assert that every joule of energy must be accounted for by the strictest measure, or their assertions must be true. This is not a scientific hypothesis, it's "heads I win, tails you lose".