But don't jump to conclusions too lightly, even emotional abuse without any physical harm can scar people for life.
Not to be flip, but actually, our emotions are under our *own* control, not others. No matter what other people do to you emotionally, it is *always* a choice of yours on how to react. I'm not denying that emotional neglect and abuse happens, but the greatest gift I was ever able to give myself was the realization that no matter what other people did, *I* got to choose how to react to it. It's not an easy realization, but it's a true one, and I found that given the choice, I choose to be happy rather than upset, and I choose to be empowered rather than victimized. A book that helped me get there was called "Open Heart, Clear Mind" by Thubten Chodron, and I highly suggest it.
My best wishes to you, your siblings, and the other guy on finding serenity. My current observations of Hillary thus far, both in the press and the video, show vengeance, not serenity, and I hope both her, her father and her mother find their way out of the other end of this one. Rather than escaping from the cycle of negative emotion, it seems that she's only further perpetuated it in her own heart.
I don't condone what my parents did to me, but I do forgive them, and have realized that my inner peace is up to me, not anyone else. The lesson I've taken away has been that negative emotion can only be defeated by love and compassion, and I hope the players in this current drama can learn that eventually too.
Gotta agree with the AC - I've been beat before, and while it looked like this man was putting his heart into it, he looked like an out of shape skinny punk compared to the whippings I got as a child. When a beating was finished in my household, the crying didn't stop for 30 minutes, and you'd be lucky if you weren't limping afterwards. If the video had shown her inconsolable for 20 minutes after the beating, hardly able to move because of the pain, I'd be more inclined to feel some sympathy for her. As it was, she had a dick father, and a dick mother, but as soon as they got out of the room, she was cool as a cucumber, walking around like the beating was nothing to her.
Now be clear, even if you're a wimp with a belt and can't give a 16 year old enough of a smack down to keep them crying for 30 minutes, you shouldn't be beating your kid - it's stupid and unproductive. But this was definitely "gotcha" videography on the part of the kid. The whole family is rotten, and frankly, I'm most appalled by the mother - the fact that she was cool with it as an observer (although I think she got one lick in too) was chilling.
Well, yes, I have stood in front of classes, and conducted lectures, and graded essays, and graded tests - so I suppose I've got ample qualifications to judge the efficiency of education.
For most tests, grading is simply automation - heck, we went the scantron route a long long time ago. As for essays, while certainly more difficult to automate, in any sort of essay grading things are so subjective it is difficult to assert that the grading really helps any at all.
But more importantly, have you ever considered that it's not the tests that actually make for an education? If we can't make essay graders any more efficient, perhaps we shouldn't be *trying* to grade them - or perhaps it would be just as efficient for a few samples of a pool of 4 million essays to be graded and analyzed publicly, so that individuals could compare themselves to other essays, and more importantly, actually hear the thoughts behind the subjective grading. I'd rather have a prof post a series of lectures where they publicly grade a number of essays and walk through the points they care about and what they actually grade on, than have the prof simply take my five essays in a given semester, mark them up here and there, and give me a grade at the end.
Assuming that the reasons behind the inefficiency in education are insurmountable is quitter talk.
Actually, I'm highly educated - but that's really not the point. If you believe that university is about more than gaining knowledge from professors and collecting a degree at the end, perhaps you can specify *what* you think it's about? Maybe the opportunity to play sports? Dating? Living away from home?
If we're trying to educate people, and instead we're multipurposing universities to do things other than education, maybe we're not paying attention to the primary purpose well enough.
Ultimately, we all benefit from high quality schools and colleges even if we ourselves never go there.
That's only true when the costs are lower than the benefits. *Efficient* education, that keeps costs down and improves productivity in the industry, is a greater benefit to all of us than costly and inefficient education.
Just because education of the populace causes good things to happen doesn't mean that we can ignore the costs for providing that education.
But how does it apply to university professors? How do you want to see their productivity increase?
How about number of students served per semester? If your average professor can run a class for only, say, 20 kids, let's get them to run a class of 40. Or 400. Or 4000. Or 4 million. Heck, with iTunes U and Khan Academy, it's not like this is an impossible task. For a tenured professor, with essentially guaranteed employment, I can understand that they're not motivated to make those kinds of changes, but maybe we need to start taking a closer look at the terms of tenure.
How does state funding of higher education lead to mediocrity?
It distorts the market incentives. Pour enough of other peoples' money into the pot, and nobody bothers to try and become more efficient or productive at teaching - there's no incentive. Now, you may have some brilliant *quality* teachers, but if they can only teach a single person every year, they're terribly inefficient.
Do you have any idea how many hours they work, how much crap they have to put up with, how little they get paid, and how little thanks they get for taking the job?
Yes, I happen to have a great deal of experience with public grade school education, and I'll tell you right now, the problems of social promotion, teachers unions protecting the bad apples, and the quality of parents in any given school district make it an incredibly difficult job. And actually, after even just 10 years teaching, unionized teachers make some pretty good money...upwards of 70K - http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/ttable.pdf
If twenty years from now, a single grade school teacher is only able to educate 35 students a year, we'll have pitifully failed to gain any sort of efficiency or productivity in the field.
So if education happens to be something that can never improve in productivity, while everything else does, education is going to become more and more expensive relative to everything else.
I'd argue that folk like Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) have the potential to be incredibly more productive than your average teacher. Now, it may be that productivity gains in education greatly reduces the number of teachers required for the planet, and that's going to cause all kinds of disruption, but until we allow that kind of disruption to happen, we'll keep getting the inflated education costs and larger taxpayer burden we've come to expect over the past 40 years.
Teacher and professor productivity, by any measure, hasn't budged for decades. Forget the whole "education cuts" trope - that's a red herring. The real question here is why do we see incredible gains of productivity in so many other fields of work, with widget makers making more widgets per person, but in education we've hit a wall?
One answer - teacher's unions. Productivity gains are seen as a threat to union workers, and teachers are no exception. Another answer, state subsidies for education - taking away any incentive to improve efficiency leads to no improvements in efficiency.
I'd argue that besides the unions and subsidies, the other killer for our entire education system is our backwards system of social promotion. By grouping people by age, rather than by accomplishment, we make for nice and neat "grades", but end up with the inability to discern which 18 year old can read, and which 18 year old is functionally illiterate when both of them have the same high school diploma.
I'd argue the answers are - stop social promotion, end public subsidies to education, and if you're going to have public schools at all, end teachers unions.
So global warming is supposed to make the sea level rise, except when it doesn't?:)
When water flows downhill, the extra rain will be replaced with more extra rain since global warming was what caused the increased precipitation in the first place, right?:)
When your theory isn't matching observations, and you keep having to make up ad hoc special pleadings to preserve it, maybe you've got to start questioning your theory:)
"Like the cargo cultists, the AGW cult has confused cause and effect. Higher atmospheric CO2 levels do occur naturally as climate warms, but it has always been a result of the warming, a contributing factor, not the principal cause of the warming. There is no demonstrable reason for thinking that the human induced rise in atmospheric CO2 levels will cause a large, damaging rise in global temperatures. Still, much as the South Seas Islanders continue to build ersatz airfields and march about mimicking the actions of long departed solders and sailors, the anthropogenic global warming true believers continue to place all their faith in CO2, never stopping to think that they might have it wrong. They are not only misleading the public, they are misleading themselves.
Feynman identified the cure for this problem: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” It would seem that even conventional honesty is in short supply among the ranks of global warming's most vocal promoters. They also seem to have forgotten something else Feynman said: “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical."
I already provided you with a citation to an explanation of this. Which part where you unable to understand?
Your citation makes absolutely no statement of a falsifiable hypothesis for discerning whether or not something is to be considered a forcing or a feedback. It claims that it is a *result* of the model, rather than an assumption, but that's semantics - they programmed the model so that it would be a result.
Would it make sense to you if I tried to tell you that swinging the bat cannot be responsible for the ball flying away, because I can throw a ball at a stationary bad and it will bounce off and fly away?
The trick here is timing. If the swinging comes first, and the movement of the ball comes second, the swing is the cause. If the movement of the ball comes first, and the swing (most likely in the other direction) comes second, the ball is the cause.
You seem to want to believe that once a correlation is made, that causality just doesn't matter - why is that?
With the ball and the bat, where you can work out how much of the velocity of the hit ball arises from the throw, and how much arises from the swing, by building a mathematical model of the basic physics and how it depends upon the basic physical properties
You've taken my example and significantly changed it. I specified a t-ball, which is a stationary ball on top of a "T".
If the physics is correct, then that model has to work for periods when the solar energy output or the earth's orbit changed, but also for the effect of volcanic eruptions and for the industrial rise in CO2.
That's like saying if the bamboo landing fields and headsets and other cargo cult models are correct in their proportions, they can expect the same results as the real thing. Even the most complex GCM is but a pale shadow of the complexity of reality.
It is scientifically illiterate to talk about a "null hypothesis" in terms of cause and effect. Null hypothesis has meaning only for statistics, which does not address cause and effect, and refers specifically to the zero hypothesis: zero difference or zero correlation.
You're back pedaling a little bit there, but you've got a long way to go. Any non-trivial form of AGW makes the claim that human CO2 emissions *cause* significant and specific warming. If this *isn't* true, what is?
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
There you go - human CO2 emissions do *not* cause significant and specific warming.
Now, given that you're trying to *prove* a causal relationship, isn't it obvious that the null hypothesis is that there is no causal relationship?
Words have meaning in science, and "cause" is an important word.
Show me a physically realistic mathematical model in which CO2 has little effect on temperature, and show me that it does at least as good a job of matching observations regarding past and present temperature and CO2 levels
You've got bamboo headsets and landing fields, and you're telling me that I can't falsify your model until I present you with a better one. Nice try:)
You've got a warming globe (or at least until about 15 years ago) - you're asserting a cause. Demonstrate how the observed warming could not possibly be due to natural variation. Show your work:)
"The sea level was going up at about 3 mm per year. In the last year it fell about 6 mm. So that’s a change of about a centimetre of water that NASA says has fallen on land and been absorbed rather than returned to the ocean. But of course, the land is much smaller than the ocean so for the ocean to change by a centimetre, the land has to change about 2.3 cm.
To do that, the above map would have to average a medium blue well up the scale and it’s obvious from the map that there’s no way that’s happening. So I hate to say this, but their explanation doesn’t hold water "
Continuous ad hoc special pleadings when observations don't match predictions is the sign of cargo cult science:)
He's essentially an evangelical christian who believed in the infallibility and literal truth of the bible, then he began studying the bible's origins, going so far as to learn how to read the texts in their original language, and came to lose his faith as his knowledge increased. He's both an authoritative and sympathetic figure, having had the opportunity to be a true believer, and given his wide base of detailed historical knowledge of textual criticism.
Now, it's quite possible to retain ones' faith in the face of the knowledge that Bart Ehrman shares, but that's just the nature of faith:)
The bible makes prophecies and tells us about the event, the time period, and the cause, etc so we are in no doubt.
Biblical prophecies are just as detailed as Nostradamus. For example:
Using symbolic imagery means that you've got a lot of leeway for interpretation. There is no passage in the bible that claims "In 1948, the State of Israel will be reestablished." There are quotes like "Isaiah 66:8 NIV - "Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children."", but this is hardly specific to the 20th century creation of Israel.
That is because predictive modelling is a matter of probabilities, so no climate scientist would say "anthropogenic CO2 will cause X degrees of warming over Y years if released in Z amount", they would predict a result either as a figure with an error range, or as a set of decreasing probabilities, e.g. 95% likely that the temperature will increase in the range 0.2 - 0.3 C over the next decade.
I think you hit the nail on the head here - you've got a probability model here that may for short periods of time match observations fairly well, but doesn't address the root issues that are assumed. Even the most dramatic deviation from prediction could be asserted to be "consistent with" the model, simply improbably so.
Astrology is like this - the personality traits of the various signs can be said to have some sort of probability associated with them, and one might find even in large population segments, some degree of confidence that the personality traits actually match. But would you call Astrology scientific in its approach?
If AGW (or CAGW) is going to be taken seriously, it has to be more than just a probability model that can always be excused for missing the mark. The basic assumptions of say, how CO2 effects are amplified by H2O, have to be subject to strict scrutiny with clearly falsifiable hypothesis statements.
The wider the error range, obviously the less useful the model is. It is really only in the last, say 40 years that models have become sophisticated enough to produce a useful result
Two questions - 1) what is the current prediction for warming by 2020 given the "business as usual scenario" of CO2 emissions, 2) what is the current error range for that prediction?
My position is that both the basic principles (as found from Tyndalls work and according the established laws of thermodynamics) and the models themselves are falsifiable science, both having been tested and proven (or in the case of earlier models, proven false, in accordance with the test criteria).
I'll assert that some of the basic principles in the models are falsifiable science, but that there are a number of basic assumptions made by the models that are *not*. The weakest link in the chain tears the whole thing down.
Now, if you can pick a GCM, and list out all of its assumptions, and clearly mark those as either being "clearly falsifiable" or "not clearly falsifiable", then maybe we can talk. I'll start off with a simple one though - take the CO2 effect amplified by H2O assumption, and show me its falsifiability.
"Feedback" vs. "forcing" is not something that is written into the models, but rather a qualitative description of the way it behaves, based upon its fundamental physics (which is what the models are based upon).
If you cannot simply explain how to discern between a "feedback" and a "forcing", simply admit it. Citing unspecified "fundamental physics" is a cheap cop out.
In physical systems, it is most commonly observed that coupling is two way. Like a see-saw. Which is cause and which is effect, the left side of the see-saw or the right side of the see-saw?
So I take my bat, swing it at a t-ball, and now you're going to claim that somehow that the ball is the other side of a see-saw, and can be the *cause* of my bat starting to swing?
Sorry, fail - causes precede effects. If you have a sinusoidal phenomenon then the cause/effect is determined by the particular place on the wave that you're at - are you now claiming that CO2 and temperature are two sides of a sinusoidal coin?
If you push on the CO2 side, by adding CO2 to the atmosphere (from a temperature-independent source) then temperature subsequently follows by rising. If you push on the temperature side (by adding energy by a mechanism not dependent on CO2, such as an increase in solar radiation then temperature, then CO2 will follow by rising.
How can you discern from observation, which one is pushing which, or which one is pushing which *more*? If we're adding CO2 to the atmosphere from a temp independent source, *AND* we're having an increase in solar radiation absorption because of say, UV variations, or cloud cover variations, or any number of temp independent sources, how can you tell which is the larger push?
Put another way, do you have any historical record of CO2 added to the atmosphere from a temperature independent source, or are you asserting that the industrial revolution is the first ever example of that?
Once you acknowledge that there is a correlation of any kind between CO2 and temperature, the null hypothesis has been rejected.
Again, fail. A causal correlation *from* temperature *to* CO2 is your assertion. The null hypothesis for that has not been rejected.
For example, our soldiers calculate their trajectories using a physical model that has problems--it uses incorrect equations that do not properly deal with relativity. Yet it turns out that these problems are inconsequential with respect to targeting artillery shells
My assertion to you is that any effect of anthropogenic CO2 is inconsequential with respect to predicting global average temperature. The problem with your models is that they assume significance where none truly exists, and do not state what observations would contradict their assumptions.
To criticize a model in a scientifically meaningful way, you have to show that the "problem" that you have imagined that you have identified actually makes a difference in the conclusions.
All I have to do is ask for an observation that would falsify the base assumption, and not get it, in order to criticize a model in a scientifically meaningful way.
Put another way, show me the "problem" with astrology predictions of personality - build a more meaningful model to contradict the assertion of personality traits to Leos, for example:)
Science starts off with the falsifiable hypothesis. Anything else is the realm of cargo cults.
And short duration (less than a decade or two) cooling is not necessarily inconsistent with global warming because we don't have absolute knowledge of heat content of the oceans.
"not necessarily inconsistent" is the last refuge of scoundrels, I'm sure you'd agree:)
If you want to play the science game, let's hear what *is* inconsistent with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
A warm day in winter doesn't falsify seasons.
And 50, or even 100 years of global warming doesn't falsify natural climate change.
Sea level has been rising much more rapidly than expected.
So yes, the models are falsified, and we build new models using what have learned (more rapid heat transfer to the oceans, slightly less mixing of surface with subsurface waters) and try to match the observations.
The problem with that is that you've presented individual implementations of your hypothesis as falsified, but not the *basis* for your hypothesis. With an infinite variety of ad hoc special pleadings available to create an infinite variety of individual implementations, you've set up a tautology that can never be falsified.
"They need to discuss strategy. NASA says that sea level is falling due to too much rain. Hansen says that sea level is rising at a record rate and will drown Manhattan by 2008. Hadley says that we are headed for a permanent drought. These clowns need a huddle to get their story straight, because they sound like a bunch of total buffoons right now."
Well, where do you think the water from the areas experiencing drought will end up? Droughts often coincide with increased precipitation elsewhere.
Show me a single GCM that has made any sort of reliable predictions on the regional distribution of precipitation. Take your time:)
Priests raping babies? The Bible claims nothing of the sort.
But by asserting that any system of morality is permissible for God, you assert that even the most vile things you could possibly imagine are permissible. Argumentum ad absurdum, as it were.
There are many critics claiming to have proved the Bible false, and without a knowledge of the Bible it can seem like they have a case (on the surface).
Bart Ehrman is incredibly knowledgable about the Bible, and when it comes to the textual origins, including reading the text in the original languages, he's absolutely an expert. He makes more than just a compelling case for a certain view on the bible, he is a very apt teacher of the history and motivation behind the construction of the Bible.
Far from proving the Bible false, Bart Ehrman teaches about the origins of the text, and how the study of the text can give one a much more nuanced understanding of the rise of Christianity, and the early proto-Christian beliefs that competed against each other. I highly suggest his books, even if you don't agree with his conclusions.
I do so because of the various prophecies that have been fulfilled, especially in more recent times (last 100 years for example - we've seen Israel back in the land of promise - just like the Bible predicted).
Do you believe in the prophecy of Nostradamus too? Perhaps Astrology? Predictions come true all the time - we tend to gloss over all the ones that don't come true, but hey, make enough vague proclamations, and creative interpretation can lead to a confirmation time and time again.
On the one hand, he is offering eternal life of happiness to those who believe in him and follow his ways. On the other, well you get ~70 years (if you're lucky) but after that you're dead, and cease to exist. eternal death, if you like
Eternal life sounds like torture to me. I can't imagine how boring, and how deeply troubling it would be to live forever. Heck, the Buddhists actually created an entire religion around the idea of an eternal cycle of life being the equivalent to Hell!:)
However, if the events above do happen (and we have been witnessing the beginnings for a few years now), then there can be no doubt about the Bible's divine origins. No human could predict these events with such accuracy and confidence.
Here's a possible hypothesis for human prophecy - say time travel is invented in the future, and some human simply came back in time and wrote them (albeit cryptically) into the Bible?
More to the point, what if the Bible was actually written by Satan, and had demonic origins rather than divine ones? Could a super-being of Satan's power tell the future, as well as a super-being of God's power?
Which proves my point exactly - anyone who believes that they can recognize a deity when presented with one must rely on supernatural powers of their own:)
If you were able to completely simulate a person's brain, you could know exactly what they would choose given any situation.
Except we don't live in a deterministic universe. See Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as an example. You might be able to decide what choice is more likely, but a chaotic system is not predictable even with perfect simulation.
If God knows us well enough to predict what we will do in any situation, then he also knows how to manipulate situations around us to cause us to change our mind, and do something else. He knows exactly what is required to change our actions.
Then isn't God to blame when someone behaves in an evil and immoral way, since he knew what was required to change our actions, but refused to provide it?
When God CREATES the morals, then by definition, God cannot be immoral.
What we know as moral contradicts the system of morality that God has created. Either God is immoral, or the idea of killing your own child is moral. I prefer to believe the former, but for those who don't see a problem with killing their own children, perhaps they would see it differently.
Lets be clear here - my parents did not create me. Giving birth is not creation.
Of course giving birth is not creation - conception is creation.
As an exercise to determine who created you, simply imagine who you could eliminate in history, and still end up with your birth. Anyone who cannot be eliminated had a part in your creation.
If I create software, I can make it do whatever I want. I do not feel it morally wrong to make any changes at all to the software. I can change it whenever and however I want, and at no stage should the software be allowed to question me.
So let's say you create software that goes out and kills babies. One day, the software prints out a message to sysout saying, "You know, I've been thinking about it, and this killing babies thing makes me uncomfortable. Can we just stop doing that?"
Is the software wrong for questioning you?
A test is not a real test if the person knows it is just a test.
Why would God have to test Abraham if he already knew what his choice was going to be?
Anyway, I must thank you for arguing rationally, and not resorting to personal attacks and insults. Its been a good discussion - feel free to continue - I enjoy this stuff.:-)
My pleasure - I'm an avid scholar of religion, and enjoy the topic immensely:)
We are well within the forecast temperature envelope. But models do significantly underpredict current sea level rise rates.
You've got a temperature envelope on realclimate that could *cool* ever 10 years and still fit! Really? That's what you're going to hang your hat on?
And now that current sea level rise rates have been shown to mismatch the models, what is your next step?
a) assume the models are falsified, and start from new assumptions; b) come up with an ad hoc special pleading to explain away the contrary observation.
I'll assert that you end up with B, not because it's particularly unreasonable, but because you've failed to come up with strictly falsifiable hypotheses - a GCM is made up of dozens of moving parts, and some completely disjoint primary assumptions. What we need is a clear list of all the primary assumptions, and what observations would falsify those assumptions.
What I have essentially said is that we can measure the temperature change over time and we know how the human caused forcings have varied over time. The total natural forcings can be determined from those two items.
We may understand how certain human activity has varied over time, but we have no reasonable chance of knowing which of those activities are forcings of any measurable magnitude. UHI, soot emissions, CO2 emissions, agriculture patterns, water policy and water management, and probably thousands of other human activities have all changed over time, and in some cases, we might even have decent measurements or estimates of it...but to understand the magnitude and sign of any of those assumed forcings, or even the total of those assumed forcings? That's a stretch.
And it is likely (P>70%) that the natural forcings have decreased in the last 50 years.
Not sure if I understand what that means - are you saying natural variability has changed in the past 50 years? Or are you trying to say that natural variability over the past 50 years would have been negative on the temperature scale?
Feedback effects of are not "assumed," but are based upon established physical properties of CO2 and water, such as the effect of temperature on CO2 solubility and evaporation of water.
Then tell me this, how would you discern between something acting as a feedback, and something acting as a forcing. Be specific.
There is a correlation between temperature and CO2; the question is why. For this question of causality, there is no null hypothesis, because the null hypothesis has already been excluded.
Yes, there *is* a correlation between temperature and CO2, and the historical record clearly shows CO2 changing *after* temperature. It is a novel assumption that suddenly, this behavior has changed, and as for causality, until you get a time machine, causes have to come before effects:)
The null hypothesis of no statistical relationship between temperature and CO2 is excluded.
Be careful here, you're moving the goalposts - the null hypothesis is that there is no *causal* relationship *from* CO2 *to* global average temperature. The novel proposition you claim is that there is in fact a *causal* relationship. This must be held to strict scrutiny.
-but you are hardly equipped to criticize the quality of those hindcasts unless you can offer a model that does a better job.
One does not need a competing model to demonstrate problems with an existing one. While it may be *nice* to have a new and improved model, it is not necessary to show the problems with existing models.
What you're proposing here is cargo cult science, with the demand that unless I can create a better model than the coconut radio transmitters and the bamboo landing fields, that I have no right to insist that you're barking up the wrong tree.
As for cargo cult science, here are a few more references for you to learn from:
"if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated."
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be flip, but actually, our emotions are under our *own* control, not others. No matter what other people do to you emotionally, it is *always* a choice of yours on how to react. I'm not denying that emotional neglect and abuse happens, but the greatest gift I was ever able to give myself was the realization that no matter what other people did, *I* got to choose how to react to it. It's not an easy realization, but it's a true one, and I found that given the choice, I choose to be happy rather than upset, and I choose to be empowered rather than victimized. A book that helped me get there was called "Open Heart, Clear Mind" by Thubten Chodron, and I highly suggest it.
My best wishes to you, your siblings, and the other guy on finding serenity. My current observations of Hillary thus far, both in the press and the video, show vengeance, not serenity, and I hope both her, her father and her mother find their way out of the other end of this one. Rather than escaping from the cycle of negative emotion, it seems that she's only further perpetuated it in her own heart.
I don't condone what my parents did to me, but I do forgive them, and have realized that my inner peace is up to me, not anyone else. The lesson I've taken away has been that negative emotion can only be defeated by love and compassion, and I hope the players in this current drama can learn that eventually too.
Gotta agree with the AC - I've been beat before, and while it looked like this man was putting his heart into it, he looked like an out of shape skinny punk compared to the whippings I got as a child. When a beating was finished in my household, the crying didn't stop for 30 minutes, and you'd be lucky if you weren't limping afterwards. If the video had shown her inconsolable for 20 minutes after the beating, hardly able to move because of the pain, I'd be more inclined to feel some sympathy for her. As it was, she had a dick father, and a dick mother, but as soon as they got out of the room, she was cool as a cucumber, walking around like the beating was nothing to her.
Now be clear, even if you're a wimp with a belt and can't give a 16 year old enough of a smack down to keep them crying for 30 minutes, you shouldn't be beating your kid - it's stupid and unproductive. But this was definitely "gotcha" videography on the part of the kid. The whole family is rotten, and frankly, I'm most appalled by the mother - the fact that she was cool with it as an observer (although I think she got one lick in too) was chilling.
Well, yes, I have stood in front of classes, and conducted lectures, and graded essays, and graded tests - so I suppose I've got ample qualifications to judge the efficiency of education.
For most tests, grading is simply automation - heck, we went the scantron route a long long time ago. As for essays, while certainly more difficult to automate, in any sort of essay grading things are so subjective it is difficult to assert that the grading really helps any at all.
But more importantly, have you ever considered that it's not the tests that actually make for an education? If we can't make essay graders any more efficient, perhaps we shouldn't be *trying* to grade them - or perhaps it would be just as efficient for a few samples of a pool of 4 million essays to be graded and analyzed publicly, so that individuals could compare themselves to other essays, and more importantly, actually hear the thoughts behind the subjective grading. I'd rather have a prof post a series of lectures where they publicly grade a number of essays and walk through the points they care about and what they actually grade on, than have the prof simply take my five essays in a given semester, mark them up here and there, and give me a grade at the end.
Assuming that the reasons behind the inefficiency in education are insurmountable is quitter talk.
Actually, I'm highly educated - but that's really not the point. If you believe that university is about more than gaining knowledge from professors and collecting a degree at the end, perhaps you can specify *what* you think it's about? Maybe the opportunity to play sports? Dating? Living away from home?
If we're trying to educate people, and instead we're multipurposing universities to do things other than education, maybe we're not paying attention to the primary purpose well enough.
That's only true when the costs are lower than the benefits. *Efficient* education, that keeps costs down and improves productivity in the industry, is a greater benefit to all of us than costly and inefficient education.
Just because education of the populace causes good things to happen doesn't mean that we can ignore the costs for providing that education.
How about number of students served per semester? If your average professor can run a class for only, say, 20 kids, let's get them to run a class of 40. Or 400. Or 4000. Or 4 million. Heck, with iTunes U and Khan Academy, it's not like this is an impossible task. For a tenured professor, with essentially guaranteed employment, I can understand that they're not motivated to make those kinds of changes, but maybe we need to start taking a closer look at the terms of tenure.
It distorts the market incentives. Pour enough of other peoples' money into the pot, and nobody bothers to try and become more efficient or productive at teaching - there's no incentive. Now, you may have some brilliant *quality* teachers, but if they can only teach a single person every year, they're terribly inefficient.
Yes, I happen to have a great deal of experience with public grade school education, and I'll tell you right now, the problems of social promotion, teachers unions protecting the bad apples, and the quality of parents in any given school district make it an incredibly difficult job. And actually, after even just 10 years teaching, unionized teachers make some pretty good money...upwards of 70K - http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/ttable.pdf
If twenty years from now, a single grade school teacher is only able to educate 35 students a year, we'll have pitifully failed to gain any sort of efficiency or productivity in the field.
So if education happens to be something that can never improve in productivity, while everything else does, education is going to become more and more expensive relative to everything else.
I'd argue that folk like Khan Academy (http://www.khanacademy.org/) have the potential to be incredibly more productive than your average teacher. Now, it may be that productivity gains in education greatly reduces the number of teachers required for the planet, and that's going to cause all kinds of disruption, but until we allow that kind of disruption to happen, we'll keep getting the inflated education costs and larger taxpayer burden we've come to expect over the past 40 years.
Teacher and professor productivity, by any measure, hasn't budged for decades. Forget the whole "education cuts" trope - that's a red herring. The real question here is why do we see incredible gains of productivity in so many other fields of work, with widget makers making more widgets per person, but in education we've hit a wall?
One answer - teacher's unions. Productivity gains are seen as a threat to union workers, and teachers are no exception. Another answer, state subsidies for education - taking away any incentive to improve efficiency leads to no improvements in efficiency.
I'd argue that besides the unions and subsidies, the other killer for our entire education system is our backwards system of social promotion. By grouping people by age, rather than by accomplishment, we make for nice and neat "grades", but end up with the inability to discern which 18 year old can read, and which 18 year old is functionally illiterate when both of them have the same high school diploma.
I'd argue the answers are - stop social promotion, end public subsidies to education, and if you're going to have public schools at all, end teachers unions.
Ha! That made me snort milk out of my nose!
How about I just show you a model, and say you need to show me a better model to disprove mine :)
So global warming is supposed to make the sea level rise, except when it doesn't? :)
When water flows downhill, the extra rain will be replaced with more extra rain since global warming was what caused the increased precipitation in the first place, right? :)
When your theory isn't matching observations, and you keep having to make up ad hoc special pleadings to preserve it, maybe you've got to start questioning your theory :)
Hat tip to Feynman:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=275925
"Like the cargo cultists, the AGW cult has confused cause and effect. Higher atmospheric CO2 levels do occur naturally as climate warms, but it has always been a result of the warming, a contributing factor, not the principal cause of the warming. There is no demonstrable reason for thinking that the human induced rise in atmospheric CO2 levels will cause a large, damaging rise in global temperatures. Still, much as the South Seas Islanders continue to build ersatz airfields and march about mimicking the actions of long departed solders and sailors, the anthropogenic global warming true believers continue to place all their faith in CO2, never stopping to think that they might have it wrong. They are not only misleading the public, they are misleading themselves.
Feynman identified the cure for this problem: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” It would seem that even conventional honesty is in short supply among the ranks of global warming's most vocal promoters. They also seem to have forgotten something else Feynman said: “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
Be safe, enjoy the interglacial and stay skeptical."
Your citation makes absolutely no statement of a falsifiable hypothesis for discerning whether or not something is to be considered a forcing or a feedback. It claims that it is a *result* of the model, rather than an assumption, but that's semantics - they programmed the model so that it would be a result.
The trick here is timing. If the swinging comes first, and the movement of the ball comes second, the swing is the cause. If the movement of the ball comes first, and the swing (most likely in the other direction) comes second, the ball is the cause.
You seem to want to believe that once a correlation is made, that causality just doesn't matter - why is that?
You've taken my example and significantly changed it. I specified a t-ball, which is a stationary ball on top of a "T".
That's like saying if the bamboo landing fields and headsets and other cargo cult models are correct in their proportions, they can expect the same results as the real thing. Even the most complex GCM is but a pale shadow of the complexity of reality.
You're back pedaling a little bit there, but you've got a long way to go. Any non-trivial form of AGW makes the claim that human CO2 emissions *cause* significant and specific warming. If this *isn't* true, what is?
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
There you go - human CO2 emissions do *not* cause significant and specific warming.
Now, given that you're trying to *prove* a causal relationship, isn't it obvious that the null hypothesis is that there is no causal relationship?
Words have meaning in science, and "cause" is an important word.
You've got bamboo headsets and landing fields, and you're telling me that I can't falsify your model until I present you with a better one. Nice try :)
You've got a warming globe (or at least until about 15 years ago) - you're asserting a cause. Demonstrate how the observed warming could not possibly be due to natural variation. Show your work :)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/
"The sea level was going up at about 3 mm per year. In the last year it fell about 6 mm. So that’s a change of about a centimetre of water that NASA says has fallen on land and been absorbed rather than returned to the ocean. But of course, the land is much smaller than the ocean so for the ocean to change by a centimetre, the land has to change about 2.3 cm.
To do that, the above map would have to average a medium blue well up the scale and it’s obvious from the map that there’s no way that’s happening. So I hate to say this, but their explanation doesn’t hold water "
Continuous ad hoc special pleadings when observations don't match predictions is the sign of cargo cult science :)
So a small regional drought seems like just as likely an "outlier" than a large regional drought?
Sure, I'm willing to entertain that idea - got data?
http://www.bartdehrman.com/
He's essentially an evangelical christian who believed in the infallibility and literal truth of the bible, then he began studying the bible's origins, going so far as to learn how to read the texts in their original language, and came to lose his faith as his knowledge increased. He's both an authoritative and sympathetic figure, having had the opportunity to be a true believer, and given his wide base of detailed historical knowledge of textual criticism.
Now, it's quite possible to retain ones' faith in the face of the knowledge that Bart Ehrman shares, but that's just the nature of faith :)
Biblical prophecies are just as detailed as Nostradamus. For example:
http://100prophecies.org/page11.htm
Using symbolic imagery means that you've got a lot of leeway for interpretation. There is no passage in the bible that claims "In 1948, the State of Israel will be reestablished." There are quotes like "Isaiah 66:8 NIV - "Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labour than she gives birth to her children."", but this is hardly specific to the 20th century creation of Israel.
I think you hit the nail on the head here - you've got a probability model here that may for short periods of time match observations fairly well, but doesn't address the root issues that are assumed. Even the most dramatic deviation from prediction could be asserted to be "consistent with" the model, simply improbably so.
Astrology is like this - the personality traits of the various signs can be said to have some sort of probability associated with them, and one might find even in large population segments, some degree of confidence that the personality traits actually match. But would you call Astrology scientific in its approach?
If AGW (or CAGW) is going to be taken seriously, it has to be more than just a probability model that can always be excused for missing the mark. The basic assumptions of say, how CO2 effects are amplified by H2O, have to be subject to strict scrutiny with clearly falsifiable hypothesis statements.
Two questions - 1) what is the current prediction for warming by 2020 given the "business as usual scenario" of CO2 emissions, 2) what is the current error range for that prediction?
I'll assert that some of the basic principles in the models are falsifiable science, but that there are a number of basic assumptions made by the models that are *not*. The weakest link in the chain tears the whole thing down.
Now, if you can pick a GCM, and list out all of its assumptions, and clearly mark those as either being "clearly falsifiable" or "not clearly falsifiable", then maybe we can talk. I'll start off with a simple one though - take the CO2 effect amplified by H2O assumption, and show me its falsifiability.
If you cannot simply explain how to discern between a "feedback" and a "forcing", simply admit it. Citing unspecified "fundamental physics" is a cheap cop out.
So I take my bat, swing it at a t-ball, and now you're going to claim that somehow that the ball is the other side of a see-saw, and can be the *cause* of my bat starting to swing?
Sorry, fail - causes precede effects. If you have a sinusoidal phenomenon then the cause/effect is determined by the particular place on the wave that you're at - are you now claiming that CO2 and temperature are two sides of a sinusoidal coin?
How can you discern from observation, which one is pushing which, or which one is pushing which *more*? If we're adding CO2 to the atmosphere from a temp independent source, *AND* we're having an increase in solar radiation absorption because of say, UV variations, or cloud cover variations, or any number of temp independent sources, how can you tell which is the larger push?
Put another way, do you have any historical record of CO2 added to the atmosphere from a temperature independent source, or are you asserting that the industrial revolution is the first ever example of that?
Again, fail. A causal correlation *from* temperature *to* CO2 is your assertion. The null hypothesis for that has not been rejected.
My assertion to you is that any effect of anthropogenic CO2 is inconsequential with respect to predicting global average temperature. The problem with your models is that they assume significance where none truly exists, and do not state what observations would contradict their assumptions.
All I have to do is ask for an observation that would falsify the base assumption, and not get it, in order to criticize a model in a scientifically meaningful way.
Put another way, show me the "problem" with astrology predictions of personality - build a more meaningful model to contradict the assertion of personality traits to Leos, for example :)
Science starts off with the falsifiable hypothesis. Anything else is the realm of cargo cults.
"not necessarily inconsistent" is the last refuge of scoundrels, I'm sure you'd agree :)
If you want to play the science game, let's hear what *is* inconsistent with catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
And 50, or even 100 years of global warming doesn't falsify natural climate change.
Look at the graph again.
http://climate4you.com/images/UnivColorado%20MeanSeaLevelSince1992%20With1yrRunningAverage.gif
Sea level has been rising much as it has since we've left the Little Ice Age. What is so unexpected about that?
Except they're not - they're missing heat:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png
The problem with that is that you've presented individual implementations of your hypothesis as falsified, but not the *basis* for your hypothesis. With an infinite variety of ad hoc special pleadings available to create an infinite variety of individual implementations, you've set up a tautology that can never be falsified.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/23/the-texas-centered-drought-versus-1918-1956-and-1934/
Take a closer look at the regional nature of 2011 and the much larger nature of the 1930s, and then spot the outlier :)
http://www.real-science.com/time-hockey-team-timeout
"They need to discuss strategy. NASA says that sea level is falling due to too much rain. Hansen says that sea level is rising at a record rate and will drown Manhattan by 2008. Hadley says that we are headed for a permanent drought. These clowns need a huddle to get their story straight, because they sound like a bunch of total buffoons right now."
Show me a single GCM that has made any sort of reliable predictions on the regional distribution of precipitation. Take your time :)
But by asserting that any system of morality is permissible for God, you assert that even the most vile things you could possibly imagine are permissible. Argumentum ad absurdum, as it were.
Bart Ehrman is incredibly knowledgable about the Bible, and when it comes to the textual origins, including reading the text in the original languages, he's absolutely an expert. He makes more than just a compelling case for a certain view on the bible, he is a very apt teacher of the history and motivation behind the construction of the Bible.
Far from proving the Bible false, Bart Ehrman teaches about the origins of the text, and how the study of the text can give one a much more nuanced understanding of the rise of Christianity, and the early proto-Christian beliefs that competed against each other. I highly suggest his books, even if you don't agree with his conclusions.
Do you believe in the prophecy of Nostradamus too? Perhaps Astrology? Predictions come true all the time - we tend to gloss over all the ones that don't come true, but hey, make enough vague proclamations, and creative interpretation can lead to a confirmation time and time again.
Eternal life sounds like torture to me. I can't imagine how boring, and how deeply troubling it would be to live forever. Heck, the Buddhists actually created an entire religion around the idea of an eternal cycle of life being the equivalent to Hell! :)
Here's a possible hypothesis for human prophecy - say time travel is invented in the future, and some human simply came back in time and wrote them (albeit cryptically) into the Bible?
More to the point, what if the Bible was actually written by Satan, and had demonic origins rather than divine ones? Could a super-being of Satan's power tell the future, as well as a super-being of God's power?
Which proves my point exactly - anyone who believes that they can recognize a deity when presented with one must rely on supernatural powers of their own :)
Except we don't live in a deterministic universe. See Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as an example. You might be able to decide what choice is more likely, but a chaotic system is not predictable even with perfect simulation.
Then isn't God to blame when someone behaves in an evil and immoral way, since he knew what was required to change our actions, but refused to provide it?
What we know as moral contradicts the system of morality that God has created. Either God is immoral, or the idea of killing your own child is moral. I prefer to believe the former, but for those who don't see a problem with killing their own children, perhaps they would see it differently.
Of course giving birth is not creation - conception is creation.
As an exercise to determine who created you, simply imagine who you could eliminate in history, and still end up with your birth. Anyone who cannot be eliminated had a part in your creation.
So let's say you create software that goes out and kills babies. One day, the software prints out a message to sysout saying, "You know, I've been thinking about it, and this killing babies thing makes me uncomfortable. Can we just stop doing that?"
Is the software wrong for questioning you?
Why would God have to test Abraham if he already knew what his choice was going to be?
My pleasure - I'm an avid scholar of religion, and enjoy the topic immensely :)
You've got a temperature envelope on realclimate that could *cool* ever 10 years and still fit! Really? That's what you're going to hang your hat on?
And now that current sea level rise rates have been shown to mismatch the models, what is your next step?
a) assume the models are falsified, and start from new assumptions;
b) come up with an ad hoc special pleading to explain away the contrary observation.
I'll assert that you end up with B, not because it's particularly unreasonable, but because you've failed to come up with strictly falsifiable hypotheses - a GCM is made up of dozens of moving parts, and some completely disjoint primary assumptions. What we need is a clear list of all the primary assumptions, and what observations would falsify those assumptions.
We may understand how certain human activity has varied over time, but we have no reasonable chance of knowing which of those activities are forcings of any measurable magnitude. UHI, soot emissions, CO2 emissions, agriculture patterns, water policy and water management, and probably thousands of other human activities have all changed over time, and in some cases, we might even have decent measurements or estimates of it...but to understand the magnitude and sign of any of those assumed forcings, or even the total of those assumed forcings? That's a stretch.
An interesting post that might help speak to the idea of small forcings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/04/the-1-solution/
Not sure if I understand what that means - are you saying natural variability has changed in the past 50 years? Or are you trying to say that natural variability over the past 50 years would have been negative on the temperature scale?
How would you falsify either of those assertions?
Then tell me this, how would you discern between something acting as a feedback, and something acting as a forcing. Be specific.
Yes, there *is* a correlation between temperature and CO2, and the historical record clearly shows CO2 changing *after* temperature. It is a novel assumption that suddenly, this behavior has changed, and as for causality, until you get a time machine, causes have to come before effects :)
Be careful here, you're moving the goalposts - the null hypothesis is that there is no *causal* relationship *from* CO2 *to* global average temperature. The novel proposition you claim is that there is in fact a *causal* relationship. This must be held to strict scrutiny.
One does not need a competing model to demonstrate problems with an existing one. While it may be *nice* to have a new and improved model, it is not necessary to show the problems with existing models.
What you're proposing here is cargo cult science, with the demand that unless I can create a better model than the coconut radio transmitters and the bamboo landing fields, that I have no right to insist that you're barking up the wrong tree.
As for cargo cult science, here are a few more references for you to learn from:
http://misunderstoodfinance.blogspot.com/2010/01/would-feynman-disprove-global-warming.html
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3607
"if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it; other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked — to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated."
Reminds me of another bright star that burnt out recently:
http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/
Condolences to Jobs' family, and to all of those that will miss him.