I was agreeing with your comments up to the last line; I don't have a death wish, I simply would consider my life worth the trip.
Alas, I'm perhaps too old to go anyway, but the point is, if you did advertise such a position I'm sure you'd find plenty of qualified geologists, biologists or whatever to fill every available position a hundred times over.
As I understand it (and I might be mistaken) climate is the average weather for a given region in a given time range (usually 30 years), thus I would expect that large variations over long times such as the Medieval Warm Period (lasted about 500 years) or the Little Ice Age (about 300 years) to be predicted (actually, post-dicted) by our climate models.
As I understand it, no climate model predicts the MWP or the Little Ice Age; thus in my view, if your model can't tell me what the climate was, then I have no confidence that it can tell me what it will be.
I agree with your comment and I hope you like the talk.
Besides morality, there is a real difference between the opinions of someone living, let's say in the USA, and someone living in a rural area in a developing country.
I work everyday with people in rural areas in southern Mexico and I think that what they need is more industry besides more education; yes, it is bad for the environment, but one can't really face this people and tell them they must starve so that people in developed countries can continue to live in comparative riches.
Plus, a lot of what the media presents is in my humble opinion overblown.
But to find a solution we must talk and face the reality of life on each side. Name-calling is not going to solve the problems we face.
Yes, I watched the moon landing on TV (B&W of course) and your mention of it made me think of the many things we, as humans, have accomplished in the last 50 years.
I still believe in the human capacity to adapt and succeed, I'm just worried silly about politicians, who are more concerned with their personal well-being than with humanity's well-being.
I don't have a good answer but I'm far from believing Al Gore has a better one.
Please read this paper if you have enough education to actually follow it.
As Bazilevskaya pointed out in papers published in 1991 and 2000, cosmic ray influx appears to have a relation to weather and cosmic ray influx is partly determined by the strength of the van Allen belt.
Please, don't call ignorant someone who points out a fact just because you never saw it on TV
Hello TapeCutter, thanks for the lengthy reply. Perhaps trying to condense my thoughts on a small post I oversimplified some things.
Clearly, scientists are aware of all the things you mention but I think that somewhere, somehow a scientist got to talking to a politician, the politician to reporter and the thing got blown out of proportion.
Now all three (scientist, politician and reporter) are too deeply mired to just back out, so they must predict greater catastrophes to keep face.
I'm old enough to remember how the report of the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, was presented by the media and the hysterics that surrounded it. And not that the report is wrong, simply that it ignores progress, same problem with Malthus; yes, population growth should be arrested, yes resources are finite but, big but, technology makes more efficient use of such resources and thus population can grow larger that was thought possible.
I don't deny that global warming is occurring, actually I pointed out that has been happening for at least 10,00 years. Historically, Greenland, due to a warmer climate, was settled by the Norse around 1,000 years ago, then came the 1400's and the climate got colder, deforestation and other factors killed every Norse in Greenland. So yes, climate change is real and yes it can kill entire populations.
What I have a problem with is with scientists (actually politicians with the help of grant-seeking scientists) telling us that they have the solution and the solution is for rich nations to go on living well and poor nations to go on being poor.
Should we be spending money on stopping the unstoppable? I think we should be spending money on creating more efficient ways of using our resources and helping people everywhere live better lives.
It is my point of view as well. I don't deny global warming, I just don't think the proposed "solutions" will solve it and I don't think that reducing output will stop it.
We need to use more technology to find ways to capture CO2 faster than it is output, because the many millions, actually billions, of people living in poverty around the world will one day be outputting more CO2 as their standards of living rise.
I actually make a living raising organic, free-range cattle; so I feel very pissed when someone tells me I am a lackey of big oil or whatever, but I know free-range cattle does not scale, not to feed billions of humans; so it is more of a cool luxury rather than a true solution to hunger and it does contribute more CO2 (deforestation) than industrial raising of cattle, but ask anyone and it is very, very green thing to do, and actually very profitable.
Please, please. See a great talk from David Deutsch at TED towards the end he talks about global warming, very interesting point of view.
And no, I'm not a climatologist, but neither I'm uneducated and will not bow before ANY priest of ANY religion.
Show me hard data; show me the experiments that prove your theory and I will certainly and humbly accept whatever it is you are saying.
Now, if you want me to just take you word for it, sorry. No can do.
In the 1970's the then current and accepted theory by the high priests was that pollution (i.e industrial waste gases) was going to freeze the Earth. Now it is going to burn it.
I beg all of you to please see this TED Talk before modding me down again. Ive been labelled heretic for posting on related stories in the last couple of weeks, actually modded insightful until the thought police arrived and modded me troll.
The weather exhibits chaotic behavior and to find precisely one single cause for variation is futile, like CO2 emissions from human activities.
The hottest day on record! screams the summary. Er, well since 1941. Well and good, how do you know the hottest day last century in Australia didn't happen in 1940?
The Earth has been getting warmer since about 10,000 years ago. Truth. AGW doesn't explain that. But it does follow that the Earth was getting warmer while we humans still lived in caves and were probably numbered in the thousands, not in millions of people. No, we are told. AGW is about the speeding up of warming. Really? We know for sure what the speed of variation would be without humans around? Let us not confuse premises with facts.
The variables are many and not one of them is well understood: ocean currents, atmospheric currents, solar radiation (insolation), the effect of the strength of the Van Allen belt, volcanic eruptions, etc. No weather model can correctly predict past, known, climate; how can one believe that the future predictions are correct?
We need a more open discussion and a lot less cries of burn the heretics. We are talking about science, not religion.
BTW, if anyone knows of a climate model that correctly predicts past, known weather, please post a link.
a) That North America was covered by an ice sheet until about 10,000 years ago. See Wikipedia
b)That Mars is suffering "climate change" too. See here
Now please prove that the retreat of glaciers in North America was caused by cavemen driving SUVs and burning fossil fuels and not by some unknown natural phenomenon.
The sun evaporates salt water in the sea and it falls as fresh water into the land, thus replenishing the "fuel".
Again, if the volume of rain is less than the volume used then yes, one would run out. But this happens in a natural fashion all the time, rivers run dry because of drought or overflow because of rain higher than usual.
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. source
For many years to come one will wonder if the data presented to support claims such as this has been "tricked" to conform to someone's belief instead of representing reality.
Don't be insulted but $425 U.S. dollars is something like a WHOLE month's salary for a developer in Third World countries, meaning no rent, no food, no nothing for a month, or more likely, tightening your belt very hard for six months...
Now, Google gave away more than 2,000 (yes, two thousand) phones at Google I/O show.
Who is running demographics for Google?; from my experience at the forums and groups, most developers are in Third World countries (India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, South America), if we had money to attend Google I/O it would not be a problem, but not having money makes "cheaper" than Apple's iPhone just relative.
Google should look at where the developers are and create a program accessible to those people, not just give away phones at rich (comparatively) developers...
As I said, I've been around. I have done some work with Motorola phones, tried very hard with Android, but I couldn't get enough traction to do anything meaningful, so I dropped it; I have to earn my living every day because I'm not a salaried employee, so perhaps my patience is lower now than it could be.
I really got lost trying to get some SQLite stuff to work in the emulator, I could get some simple queries going but after that, there is not enough documentation to figure out easily how to get from display this one record on the screen to list this database and let the user choose one record.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, the "friendlier" to developers is really that it is open source, that you can use open source tools (Eclipse, Ant, etc.) for development, but that's all folks! as the good bunny said.
Documentation sucks, most of developers are outside the U.S. (from my experience mainly India and Pakistan) where they can't get a developer's phone, the emulator is fine except that it can't emulate making calls or receiving them, etc. etc.
It is "friendlier" in a sense but like the Apple of old days (i.e. early 80's), when you could get real support, real docs and real machines to develop apps.
Someone needs to get behind developers' support right away!
Part of the lack of good apps is the lack of solid documentation and examples. I spent weeks learning the API, but anytime I wanted to do something more meaningful that display stuff on the screen, I would get bogged down trying to figure out how to do it.
I'm not a newbie, I started programming computers back in the eighties (Z80 and 6502 assembler) so I know my way around, but the documentation is horrible, sometimes you think you got it all figured out and it turns out is an earlier / later version of the API, which doesn't quite work that way anyway.
Also, for those of us outside the U.S., it's hard to get a real phone to play with, even when Google gave thousands aways at Google I/O, you can't get one internationally at a reduced price.(At least you couldn't last time I checked.)
I gave up and decided to come back when there was some organization to the docs and some real support for independent developers
Having said all that, I believe the platform will take off and do very well; it is simply too young.
And not only from games. A friend of mine, a successful accountant almost died some months ago from a clot, formed in her legs from sitting too may hours.
What ever else you are doing, get up and walk some every hour or so
.....so can us little brothers be watching big brother... No double standards here.
Of the 6 plus billion people on this planet, it is some fraction of 1% that messes things up for the rest of us. Its about time we start watching them..
Ethanol can be obtained from a myriad sources, not only corn and sugarcane. It can be obtained from algae for example. Not cheap yet but hydrogen fuel cells aren't cheap either.
Slashdot Mirror
I was agreeing with your comments up to the last line; I don't have a death wish, I simply would consider my life worth the trip.
Alas, I'm perhaps too old to go anyway, but the point is, if you did advertise such a position I'm sure you'd find plenty of qualified geologists, biologists or whatever to fill every available position a hundred times over.
There are plenty of qualified volunteers who would leap at a chance of making it alive.
You are wrong: I would go even if I knew I wouldt get back alive!
Just going would be enough for me.
As I understand it (and I might be mistaken) climate is the average weather for a given region in a given time range (usually 30 years), thus I would expect that large variations over long times such as the Medieval Warm Period (lasted about 500 years) or the Little Ice Age (about 300 years) to be predicted (actually, post-dicted) by our climate models.
As I understand it, no climate model predicts the MWP or the Little Ice Age; thus in my view, if your model can't tell me what the climate was, then I have no confidence that it can tell me what it will be.
I agree with your comment and I hope you like the talk.
Besides morality, there is a real difference between the opinions of someone living, let's say in the USA, and someone living in a rural area in a developing country.
I work everyday with people in rural areas in southern Mexico and I think that what they need is more industry besides more education; yes, it is bad for the environment, but one can't really face this people and tell them they must starve so that people in developed countries can continue to live in comparative riches.
Plus, a lot of what the media presents is in my humble opinion overblown.
But to find a solution we must talk and face the reality of life on each side. Name-calling is not going to solve the problems we face.
[mandatory] Get off my lawn! [/mandatory]
Yes, I watched the moon landing on TV (B&W of course) and your mention of it made me think of the many things we, as humans, have accomplished in the last 50 years.
I still believe in the human capacity to adapt and succeed, I'm just worried silly about politicians, who are more concerned with their personal well-being than with humanity's well-being.
I don't have a good answer but I'm far from believing Al Gore has a better one.
Well, thanks for the clarificiation.
FUCK YOU
Now that is an insult.
Please read this paper if you have enough education to actually follow it.
As Bazilevskaya pointed out in papers published in 1991 and 2000, cosmic ray influx appears to have a relation to weather and cosmic ray influx is partly determined by the strength of the van Allen belt.
Please, don't call ignorant someone who points out a fact just because you never saw it on TV
Hello TapeCutter, thanks for the lengthy reply. Perhaps trying to condense my thoughts on a small post I oversimplified some things.
Clearly, scientists are aware of all the things you mention but I think that somewhere, somehow a scientist got to talking to a politician, the politician to reporter and the thing got blown out of proportion.
Now all three (scientist, politician and reporter) are too deeply mired to just back out, so they must predict greater catastrophes to keep face.
I'm old enough to remember how the report of the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, was presented by the media and the hysterics that surrounded it. And not that the report is wrong, simply that it ignores progress, same problem with Malthus; yes, population growth should be arrested, yes resources are finite but, big but, technology makes more efficient use of such resources and thus population can grow larger that was thought possible.
I don't deny that global warming is occurring, actually I pointed out that has been happening for at least 10,00 years. Historically, Greenland, due to a warmer climate, was settled by the Norse around 1,000 years ago, then came the 1400's and the climate got colder, deforestation and other factors killed every Norse in Greenland. So yes, climate change is real and yes it can kill entire populations.
What I have a problem with is with scientists (actually politicians with the help of grant-seeking scientists) telling us that they have the solution and the solution is for rich nations to go on living well and poor nations to go on being poor.
Should we be spending money on stopping the unstoppable? I think we should be spending money on creating more efficient ways of using our resources and helping people everywhere live better lives.
Thank you for your post.
It is my point of view as well. I don't deny global warming, I just don't think the proposed "solutions" will solve it and I don't think that reducing output will stop it.
We need to use more technology to find ways to capture CO2 faster than it is output, because the many millions, actually billions, of people living in poverty around the world will one day be outputting more CO2 as their standards of living rise.
I actually make a living raising organic, free-range cattle; so I feel very pissed when someone tells me I am a lackey of big oil or whatever, but I know free-range cattle does not scale, not to feed billions of humans; so it is more of a cool luxury rather than a true solution to hunger and it does contribute more CO2 (deforestation) than industrial raising of cattle, but ask anyone and it is very, very green thing to do, and actually very profitable.
Please, please. See a great talk from David Deutsch at TED towards the end he talks about global warming, very interesting point of view.
And no, I'm not a climatologist, but neither I'm uneducated and will not bow before ANY priest of ANY religion.
Show me hard data; show me the experiments that prove your theory and I will certainly and humbly accept whatever it is you are saying.
Now, if you want me to just take you word for it, sorry. No can do.
In the 1970's the then current and accepted theory by the high priests was that pollution (i.e industrial waste gases) was going to freeze the Earth. Now it is going to burn it.
Actually, I know that I know nothing!
I beg all of you to please see this TED Talk before modding me down again. Ive been labelled heretic for posting on related stories in the last couple of weeks, actually modded insightful until the thought police arrived and modded me troll.
The weather exhibits chaotic behavior and to find precisely one single cause for variation is futile, like CO2 emissions from human activities.
The hottest day on record! screams the summary. Er, well since 1941. Well and good, how do you know the hottest day last century in Australia didn't happen in 1940?
The Earth has been getting warmer since about 10,000 years ago. Truth. AGW doesn't explain that. But it does follow that the Earth was getting warmer while we humans still lived in caves and were probably numbered in the thousands, not in millions of people. No, we are told. AGW is about the speeding up of warming. Really? We know for sure what the speed of variation would be without humans around? Let us not confuse premises with facts.
The variables are many and not one of them is well understood: ocean currents, atmospheric currents, solar radiation (insolation), the effect of the strength of the Van Allen belt, volcanic eruptions, etc. No weather model can correctly predict past, known, climate; how can one believe that the future predictions are correct?
We need a more open discussion and a lot less cries of burn the heretics. We are talking about science, not religion.
BTW, if anyone knows of a climate model that correctly predicts past, known weather, please post a link.
Please, refute:
a) That North America was covered by an ice sheet until about 10,000 years ago. See Wikipedia
b)That Mars is suffering "climate change" too. See here
Now please prove that the retreat of glaciers in North America was caused by cavemen driving SUVs and burning fossil fuels and not by some unknown natural phenomenon.
Not really, but it depends on volume.
The sun evaporates salt water in the sea and it falls as fresh water into the land, thus replenishing the "fuel".
Again, if the volume of rain is less than the volume used then yes, one would run out. But this happens in a natural fashion all the time, rivers run dry because of drought or overflow because of rain higher than usual.
In other words, not writing comments means that an impossible deadline becomes slightly more^[^[^[^[ less impossible.
There, I fixed that for you!
For many years to come one will wonder if the data presented to support claims such as this has been "tricked" to conform to someone's belief instead of representing reality.
American?
Don't be insulted but $425 U.S. dollars is something like a WHOLE month's salary for a developer in Third World countries, meaning no rent, no food, no nothing for a month, or more likely, tightening your belt very hard for six months...
Now, Google gave away more than 2,000 (yes, two thousand) phones at Google I/O show.
Who is running demographics for Google?; from my experience at the forums and groups, most developers are in Third World countries (India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, South America), if we had money to attend Google I/O it would not be a problem, but not having money makes "cheaper" than Apple's iPhone just relative.
Google should look at where the developers are and create a program accessible to those people, not just give away phones at rich (comparatively) developers...
As I said, I've been around. I have done some work with Motorola phones, tried very hard with Android, but I couldn't get enough traction to do anything meaningful, so I dropped it; I have to earn my living every day because I'm not a salaried employee, so perhaps my patience is lower now than it could be.
I really got lost trying to get some SQLite stuff to work in the emulator, I could get some simple queries going but after that, there is not enough documentation to figure out easily how to get from display this one record on the screen to list this database and let the user choose one record.
Maybe I'm getting too old for this stuff. :-(
As I mentioned in my previous comment, the "friendlier" to developers is really that it is open source, that you can use open source tools (Eclipse, Ant, etc.) for development, but that's all folks! as the good bunny said.
Documentation sucks, most of developers are outside the U.S. (from my experience mainly India and Pakistan) where they can't get a developer's phone, the emulator is fine except that it can't emulate making calls or receiving them, etc. etc.
It is "friendlier" in a sense but like the Apple of old days (i.e. early 80's), when you could get real support, real docs and real machines to develop apps.
Someone needs to get behind developers' support right away!
Part of the lack of good apps is the lack of solid documentation and examples. I spent weeks learning the API, but anytime I wanted to do something more meaningful that display stuff on the screen, I would get bogged down trying to figure out how to do it.
I'm not a newbie, I started programming computers back in the eighties (Z80 and 6502 assembler) so I know my way around, but the documentation is horrible, sometimes you think you got it all figured out and it turns out is an earlier / later version of the API, which doesn't quite work that way anyway.
Also, for those of us outside the U.S., it's hard to get a real phone to play with, even when Google gave thousands aways at Google I/O, you can't get one internationally at a reduced price.(At least you couldn't last time I checked.)
I gave up and decided to come back when there was some organization to the docs and some real support for independent developers
Having said all that, I believe the platform will take off and do very well; it is simply too young.
Well, I have a similar problem an so far I don't see a practical solution
My son (yes, I fu*** old) has the same problem, except he had a live-in girlfriend whom deserted him because of this addiction to games.
I haven't seen him or talked to him in, well, fifteen months...It hurts.
How do you help a man who is intelligent, good-looking but just won't stop playing a fantasy game
And not only from games. A friend of mine, a successful accountant almost died some months ago from a clot, formed in her legs from sitting too may hours.
What ever else you are doing, get up and walk some every hour or so
I'll be damn! I'd never thought there would be advantages to being a frenchman!
.....so can us little brothers be watching big brother... No double standards here.
Of the 6 plus billion people on this planet, it is some fraction of 1% that messes things up for the rest of us.
Its about time we start watching them..
It's about time we start whacking them.
There ya go, fixed that for ya!
Ethanol can be obtained from a myriad sources, not only corn and sugarcane. It can be obtained from algae for example. Not cheap yet but hydrogen fuel cells aren't cheap either.