Evolution has a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Catastrophic global warming does not.
Neither does creationism.
The fact that Spencer manages to hold two contradictory ideas in his mind, one rational, one irrational, is no more surprising than otherwise rational atheists believing in the Cult of Global Warming.
Isn't that like Catholics claiming an infallible pope?
If you're going to argue against the interpretation, argue against the interpretation, don't just wave your hands and say that your interpretation is magically correct because it is backed up by nameless authorities with an unstated argument.
Population sampling may be good if your sample is truly random, but there's little reason to believe from their 3d map that they did anything of the sort.
Hell, for a sensor network of 300,000,000 on the ocean, you'd still be taking only a representative sample:) There's a *lot* of cubic volume there:)
I'm talking about modeling the movement of the isotopes. The assumption is that isotope ratios change over time due to specific causes - but that isn't always clear. For example:
"But if you examine the above equation, you will see that the C13 index that is reported can go down not only from decreasing C13 content, but also from an increasing C12 content (the other 98.9% of the CO2)."
"BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??"
While certainly our analysis of isotopes in the lab is pretty fool proof, our assumptions as to where and which isotopes come from and end up in the real world is based on some assumption that might not be justified.
Assuming we've properly modeled the isotope ratios, this is great - now where's the graph of the data? Perhaps we have more than three coring sites besides Bermuda, Rhode Island and British Columbia?
Do we have it for the 787 study sites in the article mentioned?
Without some sort of baseline of ocean lead levels before the industrial age, it's difficult to assert that the levels observed are caused by humanity in any specific percentage.
Where's the proxy for historic ocean lead levels pre-1850?
You haven't shown that because of this GHG effect, that we can rule out natural climate change.
Hell, you could do the same experiment against H2O - are you now going to claim that catastrophic global warming is caused by irrigation and increased humidity?
Honestly, the emotion of envy is easy to foster - but at least banks and technology companies can go out of business. Unaccountable government bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy a 90+% incumbency advantage are like leeches that add no value at all.
And yes, of course there are corporate welfare companies like Solyndra and GM that count more as government than corporation.
If you want to assert the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is both real, and dangerous, the burden of proof is on the affirmative to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement which rules out natural climate change as the reason for observed temperatures.
0.7C doesn't validate a non-falsifiable model, even if that's close to what the model predicted. Even astrologists make predictions, but astrology isn't science.
If Wallmart is sucking down the corporate welfare,
So, you'll champion the premise of indirect welfare, but pooh pooh the premise of indirect taxation?:)
Here's the deal, you get rid of all the market manipulation by the government, and stop generating a class of dependents, then the market will sort out where to allocate scarce resources. In either case (redistributive taxation, or redistributive welfare), the government is destroying wealth, and hurting us all.
Consumers with money make the economy go.
Wrong. Consumers with more wealth make the economy go - redistributing money is a non-trivial drag and manipulation of the economy causing waste.
Cellphones cost $0 in 1910. Imagination is free.
Very well, let's adjust the current poverty level to 1910s technology, and realize just how rich the 99% are compared to their forebears:)
Fine, and they can pay enough import duties to cover the unemployment.
Letting a bit of nationalism get in the way of wealth redistribution to the poor?:)
When is the last time the cost of living EVER went down?
Well, typically what we've done is get much more for the same cost, and raise our standards. Imagine what the cost of a cell phone, computer, xbox, and car might have been in the 1910s:)
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
You must really enjoy paying Walmart and McDonald's bills for them.
Don't be fooled for a second - increase taxes on walmart or mcdonalds, or raise their labor prices, and all you do is transfer that to the consumer. The fairy tale belief that you can somehow get magic money out of "big corporations" without affecting consumers is fanciful and unbecoming:)
Not at all. If they can do more with less workers, so be it.
So, what you're saying is we should have more unemployment so that every employed person can enjoy a certain lifestyle, and we leave the rest to rot?
What if they can do more with the same amount of workers living in another country with lower living costs?
But it costs X amount for an employee to continue living so they can continue working.
You're forgetting that improvements in productivity means that the "costs X" goes down too.
That being said, surely you aren't suggesting that a minimum wage jobs literally stops people from *living*, though - you're arguing for a minimum lifestyle for anyone who is employed.
What I expect is for the wealthy to quit expecting the middle class to pay their bills for them.
You do realize that the "wealthy" are the ones paying both the salary, and for the majority of the foodstamps and welfare programs out there, right?
Can you imagine how much more money everyone would have if we didn't have government redistribution schemes destroying wealth? Isn't that the real win-win-win?
Wealth is created by increasing productivity - the same cost produces more goods.
You seem to be opposed to the idea of increasing productivity, where the "work costs" go down, and we still produce the same or more - this is one of the main drivers of wealth creation.
Imagine for a moment if you had locked in productivity increases in say, hard drive capacity, and their "cost" - how much would you be paying for your 2TB hard drive if we used 1980s pricing?
Imagine for a moment if you had locked in productivity increases in say, processor speed, and their "cost" - how much would you be paying for your 2.5Ghz CPU if we used 1980s pricing?
What you propose is the destruction of wealth, which is bad for *everyone*.
Isn't that exactly what the wealth redistribution you propose is? Just another clubbing of some rich guy, feeding on the spoils, and then moving on to the next one, until finally there aren't any more rich people to plunder, and the tribe wonders who moved their cheese?:)
I'm not saying there aren't rich guys who haven't famously deserved to be clubbed in the past, present and future, but when you make a general rule out of it, rather than an occasional exception, there are in fact unintended consequences:)
I guess so long as the rich guy had spread his seed sufficiently before being clubbed to death, though, evolution didn't care:)
You used language they could understand, but made a point that invalidated your proposition:)
Human nature and millions of years of evolution did just fine without a minimum wage - the idea that we should now eliminate natural selection as a force through some sort of assertion of positivist rights is anathema to the idea of evolution, and more akin to some benign god looking down from heaven:)
Or are you asserting that if australopithecus had had a minimum wage, evolution to homo sapiens would have been faster?:)
You are right, you cannot 'magically create wealth'. Labor creates wealth.
Let's be more specific - labor, leveraged by capital investment taking on risks, improving productivity or lowering the costs of inputs, creates wealth.
You can't just assert that a billion ditch diggers creates wealth - not only do you require labor, you require a product that is in demand, and an improvement over alternatives in either efficiency or productivity. It needs to be the *right* labor, and the way we figure that out is through capitalism and the free market, not government mandates, taxes and subsides.
The idea that you can magically redistribute the "excess" wealth of any given income bracket and create wealth is a misunderstanding of how economics works - redistribution puts fingers on the scales of the free market, and does nothing but destroy wealth.
Health insurance is gambling. It's a hedge bet against future calamity, and that is a luxury, not a necessity.
The problem you have is that even if you taxed the 1% at 100% of their wealth, redistributing it to the 99% wouldn't make a dent in changing wages, not to mention destroying all the jobs created by the 1%.
Wealth is not created by redistribution - reducing the real cost of energy and improving productivity is the key. If you don't truly understand the cause of the problem, all attempts to solve it will fail.
No. A reasonable size family is a luxury, not a bare minimum.
You can always choose not to have children.
That being said, no matter what dreams people may have of minimum wage, altering it does not create wealth or change economic realities - if it did, we'd simply raise the minimum wage to $1,000,000/hour, so that everyone would just have to work 1 hour ever ten years to have a six figure annual salary.
Now, if you want to generate wealth, drive real energy costs down as much as you can. Get the cheapest energy you can into the hands of people, and the problems of poverty will take care of themselves.
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Evolution has a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
Catastrophic global warming does not.
Neither does creationism.
The fact that Spencer manages to hold two contradictory ideas in his mind, one rational, one irrational, is no more surprising than otherwise rational atheists believing in the Cult of Global Warming.
Ironic, that in the 21st century skepticism is considered a religious position :)
The freethinkers of prior centuries would be bemused :)
Appeal to authority?
Isn't that like Catholics claiming an infallible pope?
If you're going to argue against the interpretation, argue against the interpretation, don't just wave your hands and say that your interpretation is magically correct because it is backed up by nameless authorities with an unstated argument.
Cite your work :)
No, it's to mock climate nazis :)
Population sampling may be good if your sample is truly random, but there's little reason to believe from their 3d map that they did anything of the sort.
Hell, for a sensor network of 300,000,000 on the ocean, you'd still be taking only a representative sample :) There's a *lot* of cubic volume there :)
I'm talking about modeling the movement of the isotopes. The assumption is that isotope ratios change over time due to specific causes - but that isn't always clear. For example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/200...
"But if you examine the above equation, you will see that the C13 index that is reported can go down not only from decreasing C13 content, but also from an increasing C12 content (the other 98.9% of the CO2)."
"BOTTOM LINE: If the C13/C12 relationship during NATURAL inter-annual variability is the same as that found for the trends, how can people claim that the trend signal is MANMADE??"
While certainly our analysis of isotopes in the lab is pretty fool proof, our assumptions as to where and which isotopes come from and end up in the real world is based on some assumption that might not be justified.
Assuming we've properly modeled the isotope ratios, this is great - now where's the graph of the data? Perhaps we have more than three coring sites besides Bermuda, Rhode Island and British Columbia?
Do we have it for the 787 study sites in the article mentioned?
Seems like a lot of holes in that cheese :)
Well, if the "science is settled", we don't need any more research, right? :)
But seriously, a network with only 787 observation sites? Isn't that a bit thin for the entire atlantic ocean?
I'd have more faith in that if there was a larger network of observations. 787 sites to cover the entire atlantic ocean seems a bit thin.
Correlation isn't causation, of course :)
...is because of human activity.
Without some sort of baseline of ocean lead levels before the industrial age, it's difficult to assert that the levels observed are caused by humanity in any specific percentage.
Where's the proxy for historic ocean lead levels pre-1850?
You've pointed out one *necessary* factor.
You haven't shown that because of this GHG effect, that we can rule out natural climate change.
Hell, you could do the same experiment against H2O - are you now going to claim that catastrophic global warming is caused by irrigation and increased humidity?
Again, necessary *and* sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Please feel to try again :)
Honestly, the emotion of envy is easy to foster - but at least banks and technology companies can go out of business. Unaccountable government bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy a 90+% incumbency advantage are like leeches that add no value at all.
And yes, of course there are corporate welfare companies like Solyndra and GM that count more as government than corporation.
If you want to assert the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is both real, and dangerous, the burden of proof is on the affirmative to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement which rules out natural climate change as the reason for observed temperatures.
0.7C doesn't validate a non-falsifiable model, even if that's close to what the model predicted. Even astrologists make predictions, but astrology isn't science.
So, you'll champion the premise of indirect welfare, but pooh pooh the premise of indirect taxation? :)
Here's the deal, you get rid of all the market manipulation by the government, and stop generating a class of dependents, then the market will sort out where to allocate scarce resources. In either case (redistributive taxation, or redistributive welfare), the government is destroying wealth, and hurting us all.
Wrong. Consumers with more wealth make the economy go - redistributing money is a non-trivial drag and manipulation of the economy causing waste.
Very well, let's adjust the current poverty level to 1910s technology, and realize just how rich the 99% are compared to their forebears :)
Letting a bit of nationalism get in the way of wealth redistribution to the poor? :)
Well, typically what we've done is get much more for the same cost, and raise our standards. Imagine what the cost of a cell phone, computer, xbox, and car might have been in the 1910s :)
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
Don't be fooled for a second - increase taxes on walmart or mcdonalds, or raise their labor prices, and all you do is transfer that to the consumer. The fairy tale belief that you can somehow get magic money out of "big corporations" without affecting consumers is fanciful and unbecoming :)
So, what you're saying is we should have more unemployment so that every employed person can enjoy a certain lifestyle, and we leave the rest to rot?
What if they can do more with the same amount of workers living in another country with lower living costs?
You're forgetting that improvements in productivity means that the "costs X" goes down too.
That being said, surely you aren't suggesting that a minimum wage jobs literally stops people from *living*, though - you're arguing for a minimum lifestyle for anyone who is employed.
You do realize that the "wealthy" are the ones paying both the salary, and for the majority of the foodstamps and welfare programs out there, right?
Can you imagine how much more money everyone would have if we didn't have government redistribution schemes destroying wealth? Isn't that the real win-win-win?
Wealth is created by increasing productivity - the same cost produces more goods.
You seem to be opposed to the idea of increasing productivity, where the "work costs" go down, and we still produce the same or more - this is one of the main drivers of wealth creation.
Imagine for a moment if you had locked in productivity increases in say, hard drive capacity, and their "cost" - how much would you be paying for your 2TB hard drive if we used 1980s pricing?
Imagine for a moment if you had locked in productivity increases in say, processor speed, and their "cost" - how much would you be paying for your 2.5Ghz CPU if we used 1980s pricing?
What you propose is the destruction of wealth, which is bad for *everyone*.
Of course wages haven't kept up with productivity - if they did, we'd never generate excess capacity to improve things.
Should hard drive costs keep up with hard drive size?
Should computer costs keep up with processor speed?
The whole *point* of productivity is that you get *more* stuff done for *less*.
In any case, your proposal of wealth redistribution destroys wealth - it doesn't create it.
Isn't that exactly what the wealth redistribution you propose is? Just another clubbing of some rich guy, feeding on the spoils, and then moving on to the next one, until finally there aren't any more rich people to plunder, and the tribe wonders who moved their cheese? :)
I'm not saying there aren't rich guys who haven't famously deserved to be clubbed in the past, present and future, but when you make a general rule out of it, rather than an occasional exception, there are in fact unintended consequences :)
I guess so long as the rich guy had spread his seed sufficiently before being clubbed to death, though, evolution didn't care :)
You used language they could understand, but made a point that invalidated your proposition :)
Human nature and millions of years of evolution did just fine without a minimum wage - the idea that we should now eliminate natural selection as a force through some sort of assertion of positivist rights is anathema to the idea of evolution, and more akin to some benign god looking down from heaven :)
Or are you asserting that if australopithecus had had a minimum wage, evolution to homo sapiens would have been faster? :)
Let's be more specific - labor, leveraged by capital investment taking on risks, improving productivity or lowering the costs of inputs, creates wealth.
You can't just assert that a billion ditch diggers creates wealth - not only do you require labor, you require a product that is in demand, and an improvement over alternatives in either efficiency or productivity. It needs to be the *right* labor, and the way we figure that out is through capitalism and the free market, not government mandates, taxes and subsides.
The idea that you can magically redistribute the "excess" wealth of any given income bracket and create wealth is a misunderstanding of how economics works - redistribution puts fingers on the scales of the free market, and does nothing but destroy wealth.
...for invading China and ridding them of their weapons of mass destruction called "coal-fired plants"?
Kerry is being brilliantly violent, stupid, and jingoistic all at once.
Health insurance is gambling. It's a hedge bet against future calamity, and that is a luxury, not a necessity.
The problem you have is that even if you taxed the 1% at 100% of their wealth, redistributing it to the 99% wouldn't make a dent in changing wages, not to mention destroying all the jobs created by the 1%.
Wealth is not created by redistribution - reducing the real cost of energy and improving productivity is the key. If you don't truly understand the cause of the problem, all attempts to solve it will fail.
You speak about evolution, yet insist we need to get rid of social darwinism and eliminate natural selection in the economics of families?
What point are you really trying to argue here?
No. A reasonable size family is a luxury, not a bare minimum.
You can always choose not to have children.
That being said, no matter what dreams people may have of minimum wage, altering it does not create wealth or change economic realities - if it did, we'd simply raise the minimum wage to $1,000,000/hour, so that everyone would just have to work 1 hour ever ten years to have a six figure annual salary.
Now, if you want to generate wealth, drive real energy costs down as much as you can. Get the cheapest energy you can into the hands of people, and the problems of poverty will take care of themselves.