The article that scarboni888 linked to says that there were 11 mass shootings in Australia before the Port Arthur massacre (1996).
Not being an Austrialian myself, I thought I'd look it up in the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia ... It certainly seems that there were a few a mass shootings *before* the Port Arthur massacre.
Welcome to Orwellian Slashdot: Where misinformation is rated "+5 Informative"!
Well said. It sounds like your experience is very similar to mine.
I was once told that you "couldn't really understand computers unless you've extensively used punch-card systems." (what a bunch of generational snobbery!)
I didn't believe the guy who told me that and I don't believe the cynics who say that kids today will never know as much about computers as people from "insert your favorite golden age of computers here".
I suppose kids today won't learn about computers the same way that I did; but in my mind the jury is still out on whether that way will be "better" or "worse" than how I learned.
While we're on the topic of opinions that people hold about climate change: I have to admit I've never seen a survey of proponents of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change, but I seriously doubt that there is much support among so-called "warmists" for genocide.
I can only say for sure that I'm a supporter of the action plan put forward by the brilliant Dr. Sagan: "For our own world the peril is more subtle. Since this series [Cosmos] was first broadcast the dangers of the increasing greenhouse effect have become much more clear. We burn fossil fuels like coal, and gas, and petroleum putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thereby heating the earth. The hellish conditions on Venus are a reminder that this is serious business. Computer models that successfully explain the climates of other planets predict the deaths of forests, parched crop lands, the flooding of coastal cities, environmental refugees; wide spread disasters in the next century, unless we change our ways. What do we have to do? Four things:
(1) Much more efficient use of fossil fuels. Why not cars that get 70 miles-per-gallon instead of 25?
(2) Research and development on safe alternative energy sources, especially solar power.
(3) Reforestation on a grand scale.
and (4) Helping to bring the billion poorest people on the planet to self-sufficiency, which is the key step in curbing world population growth.
Every one of these steps makes sense apart from greenhouse warming! Now, no one has proposed that the trouble with Venus is that there once was Venusians who drove fuel inefficient cars, but our nearest neighbour nevertheless is a stark warning on the possible fate of an Earth-like world."
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (episode 4: Heaven and Hell (update - 10 years later))
The quality of the argument can be improved by reducing the number of baseless accusations it contains.
My comment serves to draw the attention of the moderators to rally2xs's flamebait comment and to moderate it accordingly.
Let us pretend then that it is impossible to achieve a carbon neutral society without either increasing reliance on nuclear power *or* resorting to genocide (a proposition that I deem to be highly dubious):
Show me where St.Creed has ever stated an opposition to building more nuclear power stations. Link to it. I'll want to read the comment for myself.
I have looked over St.Creed's comments in this thread and s/he has made no mention of opposition to (or support for) nuclear power.
Scanning through St.Creed's comment history I see a couple of mentions of the use of nuclear power in space.
... To summarize: From what I have seen rally2xs's allegation of support for genocide are baseless and inflammatory.
St.Creed did not specify how carbon emissions were to be reduced; The user merely stated a preference for solutions that involve reductions in carbon emissions (over solutions that involve geo-engineering).
(1) Why do you assume that the person you are replying to favours genocide as the method of reducing carbon emissions? You must have some reason or else you wouldn't have listed it as your first assumption.
(2) Genocide is a very serious accusation and I see no support for it in the comment that you are replying to.
It has been a long time since I've cared about the color of light bulbs. I haven't used an incandescent for about 5 years and so far not one of the CFLs has burnt out on me (I was lucky if I could get one year out of an incandescent bulb in the same socket).
As for the mercury: I put the CFLs in the light sockets that are very stable and well protected; I put LED bulbs in the lamps that can get knocked over by accident (I had a cat).
Agreed. The kvetching over the transition from 24 fps to 48 fps reminds me of the transition from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent or the transition from records to CDs. It strikes me as nostalgia for a (mostly) inferior product.
Ah, I see the problem. You've mixed up the "local absence of evidence" with the "global absence of evidence". Allow me to explain:
A "global absence of evidence" is where a person makes a statement for which no evidence supporting their claim exists.
A "local absence of evidence" is where a person makes a statement for which evidence supporting that claim exists, however they did not provide the evidence (or a reference to where that evidence can be obtained from).
To demonstrate the difference I can make the following statement in a Slashdot comment:
"The Earth revolves around the Sun."
The above statement is obviously true, but I have provided no evidence nor any references to evidence. In the example above there is a "local absence of evidence", but if we go to the scientific journals we will find that there is an abundance of supporting evidence is available. The same is true of Black Parrot's comment; the evidence supporting Black Parrot's statements exists, it just wasn't provided in this thread.
To that end I suggest you start looking for evidence at RealClimate. The articles are well written and frequently cite papers published in scientific journals.
Fortunately the validity of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change doesn't rest on whether, or not, Black Parrot provides a citation for every comment he/she makes on Slashdot.
A couple of years ago I went and watched Episodes 1 - 3, then the cuts scenes from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed*, followed by Episodes 4 - 6.
Before Episodes 1 - 3 I perceived Darth Vader as a purely evil guy who had a death bed repentance (why should I care?).
What Episodes 1 - 3 did (in my opinion) is turn Darth Vader from a faceless villain into a (somewhat) sympathetic character Anakin Skywalker (despite the whole Jedi temple slaughtering incident).
After that the moment when Luke is on Endor attempting to convince Darth Vader to rejoin the light-side of the force felt more realistic to me.
OK, so it goes without saying that Jar Jar Binks is a turd... and I'm not a fan of Ewoks either.
I think the whole franchise is love-able in an absurd kind of way. I mean the Galactic Empire spans thousands of planets and species and yet its entire discernable power structure is made up of humans. White humans. White human men. White human men with British accents.... and the token alien Admiral Thrawn.
* If you haven't seen the cutscenes for this game: Youtube it.
It's amazing to me that of all the things Paul Ryan could dislike about Ayn Rand's works the thing that seems to bother him the most is that Rand and her views were "atheistic". That her views were "atheistic" is what I liked the most about her writings.
It's interesting that you choose to compare the arguments from proponents of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change to "religious preachings".
I would have thought a more fitting analogy -- and something right up Mr. Dawkins alley -- would be to compare the theory of Global Climate Change to the theory of Evolution:
The "skeptics" of both topics insist that there is a lively debate on the topic. It seems to me that the "lively debate" on the topics of Evolution and Global Climate Change only exist in the media and public opinion polls (the media loves to foment controversy where none actually exists). The debate is not happening in scientific circles because the scientific experts in the fields of Biology and Climatology have both, based on the strength of evidence available, formed a consensus around the theories of Evolution and Global Climate Change respectively.
The "skeptics" of both topics don't seem to be interested in debating the scientific merits of the theories. Instead they seem preoccupied with discussing the greatly exaggerated religious, political, and economic consequences that they imagine will come to pass if the majority of people start treating the theories of Evolution and Global Climate Change as fact.
"If the Moon was indeed once part of Earth — which has been shown by extensive modeling (PDF) — the difference in the balance of zinc profiles would most likely be explained by lighter zinc isotopes evaporating away following a collision."
As a skeptic of the 'giant impact hypothesis' of the Moon's origin:
Collisions between planetary bodies are too complex to model.
I won't believe anything based on computer models unless they simulate the interaction of every single particle in the solar system.
"Garbage in - garbage out."
They obviously just kept tweaking the model until it gave them the result that they wanted.
I have an article from a non-scientific magazine in the 1960's that says the Moon drifted gently into orbit around the Earth.
I need to see a Mars size planet actually collide with an exact duplicate of the Earth and form an identical moon before I'll believe it.
The evidence that the Moon gently drifted into orbit around the Earth is being suppressed from the scientific journals! Fraud! Malpractice! It is all hoax to get lucrative government grant money!
... but seriously, all of the above is sarcasm.
I've posted this as a way to express my frustration with how modeling/simulations and proxy data are treated as "compelling" evidence when we are talking about astronomical science, but modeling/simulations and proxy data are all of a sudden treated as "dubious" when we're talking about climate science.
If you go to any Slashdot article about latest developments in climate science you'll find a bunch of (usually AC) comments that are almost identical to the ones above from climate change "skeptics".
Agreed. Sounds like the same reasoning Creationists use.
Premise: Scientific consensus with lots of evidence says that life has gradually changed over time into its present form, but
Premise: The preacher says Dinosaur bones were buried by the Devil to deceive you into believing in 'Evilution' because... stop asking questions you're making the Baby Jesus cry.
Conclusion: The science must be wrong.
There's actually a lot of similarities between the "skeptics" of scientific theory of Global Climate Change argue and the "skeptics" of the scientific theory of Evolution. I see it mostly in the types of arguments that they use.
I did a quick google search for "James Eagan Holmes motive": Turns up nothing except for a few old articles saying that the police are still searching for a motive.
Has one been released?
"VISAR seeks to develop and demonstrate a targeting sensor which operates through clouds as effectively as today’s infrared (IR) sensors operate in clear weather. This revolutionary advance would give U.S. warfighters an advantage in an especially challenging portion of the RF spectrum.”
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of terahertz waves.
I found that study interesting due to the Koch Foundation connection.
I am often told (on Slashdot climate threads) that scientists will intentionally bias their results to keep that sweet, sweet, grant money flowing. Since the Koch Foundation is known to be exceptionally biased against the consensus position on the topic of climate change one would have to assume that it would be in the financial self-interest of the research group to produce the results that the Koch Foundation wants to hear.
Since the research group's actual results support the consensus position that the Earth is warming and mankind's activities are, at least partly, responsible it would seem that the evidence supporting the scientific theory of global climate change must be undeniable.
Slashdot Mirror
The article that scarboni888 linked to says that there were 11 mass shootings in Australia before the Port Arthur massacre (1996).
... It certainly seems that there were a few a mass shootings *before* the Port Arthur massacre.
Not being an Austrialian myself, I thought I'd look it up in the Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia
Welcome to Orwellian Slashdot: Where misinformation is rated "+5 Informative"!
What pushed them over the edge is when Watson suggested that they "bite my shiny metal ass".
I suggest you ask the Fisherman's Wife what she dreams about doing with tentacled sea creatures.
Well said. It sounds like your experience is very similar to mine.
I was once told that you "couldn't really understand computers unless you've extensively used punch-card systems." (what a bunch of generational snobbery!)
I didn't believe the guy who told me that and I don't believe the cynics who say that kids today will never know as much about computers as people from "insert your favorite golden age of computers here".
I suppose kids today won't learn about computers the same way that I did; but in my mind the jury is still out on whether that way will be "better" or "worse" than how I learned.
While we're on the topic of opinions that people hold about climate change: I have to admit I've never seen a survey of proponents of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change, but I seriously doubt that there is much support among so-called "warmists" for genocide.
I can only say for sure that I'm a supporter of the action plan put forward by the brilliant Dr. Sagan:
"For our own world the peril is more subtle. Since this series [Cosmos] was first broadcast the dangers of the increasing greenhouse effect have become much more clear. We burn fossil fuels like coal, and gas, and petroleum putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thereby heating the earth. The hellish conditions on Venus are a reminder that this is serious business. Computer models that successfully explain the climates of other planets predict the deaths of forests, parched crop lands, the flooding of coastal cities, environmental refugees; wide spread disasters in the next century, unless we change our ways. What do we have to do? Four things:
(1) Much more efficient use of fossil fuels. Why not cars that get 70 miles-per-gallon instead of 25?
(2) Research and development on safe alternative energy sources, especially solar power.
(3) Reforestation on a grand scale.
and (4) Helping to bring the billion poorest people on the planet to self-sufficiency, which is the key step in curbing world population growth.
Every one of these steps makes sense apart from greenhouse warming! Now, no one has proposed that the trouble with Venus is that there once was Venusians who drove fuel inefficient cars, but our nearest neighbour nevertheless is a stark warning on the possible fate of an Earth-like world."
Carl Sagan, Cosmos (episode 4: Heaven and Hell (update - 10 years later))
The quality of the argument can be improved by reducing the number of baseless accusations it contains.
My comment serves to draw the attention of the moderators to rally2xs's flamebait comment and to moderate it accordingly.
Let us pretend then that it is impossible to achieve a carbon neutral society without either increasing reliance on nuclear power *or* resorting to genocide (a proposition that I deem to be highly dubious):
... To summarize: From what I have seen rally2xs's allegation of support for genocide are baseless and inflammatory.
Show me where St.Creed has ever stated an opposition to building more nuclear power stations. Link to it. I'll want to read the comment for myself.
I have looked over St.Creed's comments in this thread and s/he has made no mention of opposition to (or support for) nuclear power.
Scanning through St.Creed's comment history I see a couple of mentions of the use of nuclear power in space.
St.Creed did not specify how carbon emissions were to be reduced; The user merely stated a preference for solutions that involve reductions in carbon emissions (over solutions that involve geo-engineering).
(1) Why do you assume that the person you are replying to favours genocide as the method of reducing carbon emissions? You must have some reason or else you wouldn't have listed it as your first assumption.
(2) Genocide is a very serious accusation and I see no support for it in the comment that you are replying to.
It has been a long time since I've cared about the color of light bulbs. I haven't used an incandescent for about 5 years and so far not one of the CFLs has burnt out on me (I was lucky if I could get one year out of an incandescent bulb in the same socket).
As for the mercury: I put the CFLs in the light sockets that are very stable and well protected; I put LED bulbs in the lamps that can get knocked over by accident (I had a cat).
Agreed. The kvetching over the transition from 24 fps to 48 fps reminds me of the transition from incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent or the transition from records to CDs. It strikes me as nostalgia for a (mostly) inferior product.
Ah, I see the problem. You've mixed up the "local absence of evidence" with the "global absence of evidence". Allow me to explain:
A "global absence of evidence" is where a person makes a statement for which no evidence supporting their claim exists.
A "local absence of evidence" is where a person makes a statement for which evidence supporting that claim exists, however they did not provide the evidence (or a reference to where that evidence can be obtained from).
To demonstrate the difference I can make the following statement in a Slashdot comment:
"The Earth revolves around the Sun."
The above statement is obviously true, but I have provided no evidence nor any references to evidence. In the example above there is a "local absence of evidence", but if we go to the scientific journals we will find that there is an abundance of supporting evidence is available. The same is true of Black Parrot's comment; the evidence supporting Black Parrot's statements exists, it just wasn't provided in this thread.
To that end I suggest you start looking for evidence at RealClimate. The articles are well written and frequently cite papers published in scientific journals.
Fortunately the validity of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change doesn't rest on whether, or not, Black Parrot provides a citation for every comment he/she makes on Slashdot.
On the topic of scientific organizations being hacked:
If Astronomers get hacked is the scandal a "Star-gate"?
I agree.
The media doesn't have to be so impartial that we end up, as Drew Curtis would say, "giving equal time to nut jobs".
A couple of years ago I went and watched Episodes 1 - 3, then the cuts scenes from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed*, followed by Episodes 4 - 6. ... and I'm not a fan of Ewoks either. ... and the token alien Admiral Thrawn.
Before Episodes 1 - 3 I perceived Darth Vader as a purely evil guy who had a death bed repentance (why should I care?).
What Episodes 1 - 3 did (in my opinion) is turn Darth Vader from a faceless villain into a (somewhat) sympathetic character Anakin Skywalker (despite the whole Jedi temple slaughtering incident).
After that the moment when Luke is on Endor attempting to convince Darth Vader to rejoin the light-side of the force felt more realistic to me.
OK, so it goes without saying that Jar Jar Binks is a turd
I think the whole franchise is love-able in an absurd kind of way. I mean the Galactic Empire spans thousands of planets and species and yet its entire discernable power structure is made up of humans. White humans. White human men. White human men with British accents.
* If you haven't seen the cutscenes for this game: Youtube it.
Isn't that the same way you spot a patchwork mouse?
It's amazing to me that of all the things Paul Ryan could dislike about Ayn Rand's works the thing that seems to bother him the most is that Rand and her views were "atheistic". That her views were "atheistic" is what I liked the most about her writings.
It's interesting that you choose to compare the arguments from proponents of the scientific theory of Global Climate Change to "religious preachings".
I would have thought a more fitting analogy -- and something right up Mr. Dawkins alley -- would be to compare the theory of Global Climate Change to the theory of Evolution:
The "skeptics" of both topics insist that there is a lively debate on the topic. It seems to me that the "lively debate" on the topics of Evolution and Global Climate Change only exist in the media and public opinion polls (the media loves to foment controversy where none actually exists). The debate is not happening in scientific circles because the scientific experts in the fields of Biology and Climatology have both, based on the strength of evidence available, formed a consensus around the theories of Evolution and Global Climate Change respectively.
The "skeptics" of both topics don't seem to be interested in debating the scientific merits of the theories. Instead they seem preoccupied with discussing the greatly exaggerated religious, political, and economic consequences that they imagine will come to pass if the majority of people start treating the theories of Evolution and Global Climate Change as fact.
"If the Moon was indeed once part of Earth — which has been shown by extensive modeling (PDF) — the difference in the balance of zinc profiles would most likely be explained by lighter zinc isotopes evaporating away following a collision."
As a skeptic of the 'giant impact hypothesis' of the Moon's origin:
... but seriously, all of the above is sarcasm.
Collisions between planetary bodies are too complex to model.
I won't believe anything based on computer models unless they simulate the interaction of every single particle in the solar system.
"Garbage in - garbage out."
They obviously just kept tweaking the model until it gave them the result that they wanted.
I have an article from a non-scientific magazine in the 1960's that says the Moon drifted gently into orbit around the Earth.
I need to see a Mars size planet actually collide with an exact duplicate of the Earth and form an identical moon before I'll believe it.
The evidence that the Moon gently drifted into orbit around the Earth is being suppressed from the scientific journals! Fraud! Malpractice! It is all hoax to get lucrative government grant money!
I've posted this as a way to express my frustration with how modeling/simulations and proxy data are treated as "compelling" evidence when we are talking about astronomical science, but modeling/simulations and proxy data are all of a sudden treated as "dubious" when we're talking about climate science.
If you go to any Slashdot article about latest developments in climate science you'll find a bunch of (usually AC) comments that are almost identical to the ones above from climate change "skeptics".
Agreed. Sounds like the same reasoning Creationists use.
Premise: Scientific consensus with lots of evidence says that life has gradually changed over time into its present form, but
Premise: The preacher says Dinosaur bones were buried by the Devil to deceive you into believing in 'Evilution' because... stop asking questions you're making the Baby Jesus cry.
Conclusion: The science must be wrong.
There's actually a lot of similarities between the "skeptics" of scientific theory of Global Climate Change argue and the "skeptics" of the scientific theory of Evolution.
I see it mostly in the types of arguments that they use.
I did a quick google search for "James Eagan Holmes motive": Turns up nothing except for a few old articles saying that the police are still searching for a motive.
Has one been released?
"VISAR seeks to develop and demonstrate a targeting sensor which operates through clouds as effectively as today’s infrared (IR) sensors operate in clear weather. This revolutionary advance would give U.S. warfighters an advantage in an especially challenging portion of the RF spectrum.”
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of terahertz waves.
I found that study interesting due to the Koch Foundation connection.
I am often told (on Slashdot climate threads) that scientists will intentionally bias their results to keep that sweet, sweet, grant money flowing. Since the Koch Foundation is known to be exceptionally biased against the consensus position on the topic of climate change one would have to assume that it would be in the financial self-interest of the research group to produce the results that the Koch Foundation wants to hear.
Since the research group's actual results support the consensus position that the Earth is warming and mankind's activities are, at least partly, responsible it would seem that the evidence supporting the scientific theory of global climate change must be undeniable.
Claims that reducing our greenhouse gas emissions will "beggar the industrialised world" are nothing more than financial fearmongering.
I think it is worth while to point out that, of the 5 independent investigations that were launched as a result of the so-called "Climategate", all 5 have exonerated the Climatologists under investigation. None of the 5 were able to find any evidence of scientific malpractice. I'd call that, coupled with the endorsement of the G8 (+5) national academies of science, a pretty unequivocal vindication of the science of Global Climate Change.