Actually, most of the Millennials who learned math via Common Core have an irrational fear of change.
Anybody old enough to work at Panda Express probably wasn't educated via Common Core. It has only really taken off in the last few years (at least in my area) so current teenagers probably learned the standard method. So that's really an indictment of math prior to Common Core, and sounds like exactly the kind of outcome it's trying to address: students who can endlessly work long division problems out on paper but have no real intuition for numbers or ability to apply their knowledge outside of the classroom.
How any curriculum is implemented is highly dependent on the district, school, and even the specific teacher. The piece of common core that's most controversial is their different system for arithmetic manipulations, but whether you choose to teach using only that method, or teach using multiple methods in parallel, is more a curriculum choice than something wrong with the system itself.
Also, the teachers I've talked to about it are generally in favor of Common Core. They see it working better with their students, and kids are picking things up faster.
Yes, I have looked at it. My wife taught with it for a few years and observed it working better for many of her students. And, a good friend of mine is a highly acclaimed math teacher (Bill Gates took her out to lunch a few years back to hear her ideas about math education) and she's a fan of common core. Just because something is different than the way you learned it doesn't mean it's worse. Any unfamiliar method will seem more complex at first.
I know whining about common core is a popular pastime among people who have an irrational fear of change, but have you ever taken more than a few seconds to actually look at how common core teaches things? It has much more in common with real mental arithmetic than the standard method we all learned in grade school, and is very intuitive if you actually take a moment to understand it.
It's funny, because most of the complaints I've seen cherry-pick examples to intentionally make common core look more complex, but gloss over the convoluted aspects of the standard method (75+22 makes standard method look obvious, but 99 + 99 has many more steps because of the carrying). I for one (and probably most people) never actually carry numbers mentally - in the previous example I would add 100 + 100 and then subtract two, or some other shortcut that fits with human cognition rather than optimizing to be easy to write on a whiteboard.
Again, I'm against paying someone to not commit crimes.
Again, that's not what this was about. It's about preventing the problems that come along with poverty, crime being just one small sample. Calling it extortion is a textbook example of a strawman fallacy.
I don't think that [the government is a scheming villain] and I don't think most people do either.
Then please stop mischaracterizing social programs as theft or extortion. The hyperbole doesn't help your case.
I don't think giving stupid people money is a good investment for the nation. I say stupid because they either pissed away the money and didn't get a degree, got a worthless degree, or were too disabled to work and therefore shouldn't have taken the money in the first place.
What if I told you that some people become disabled AFTER getting a degree, through no fault of their own? And remember, this is student loan forgiveness ONLY for the disabled, not for a bunch of hippy-dippy art history hipsters. I know a guy who was an engineer and lost his hands in a wood chipper, no freaking joke. Successful contributor to society, probably making good money. But there's no question his ability to earn a wage is now severely impacted, quality of life took a big hit, and it is just simply a freak accident that was in no way his fault. Has a family with several kids too, including some he had adopted. Do he and his family deserve to have the banks come after them?
That's akin to extortion. Give people money so they won't commit crimes against me?
Nope, give people money so they don't become homeless and/or starve to death. Just like we hire firefighters to save people's homes and prevent fire victims from becoming homeless. By your logic, funding the military is extortion, because if we don't pay them foreigners will invade and take over the country. The thing that makes it not extortion is that your democratically elected representative is implementing these policies. You may not agree, but that's democracy - sometimes you are in the majority, sometimes you are in the minority. Don't try to victimize yourself by claiming somehow you are suffering from "extortion". Once again, words have meaning. Use them accordingly.
That's good since I didn't say that. You are quoting the wrong guy.
OP said taxes are theft. You said that my examples weren't theft, but your reasoning was because you get a benefit. Inference is, if you don't get a benefit, it's theft. If that's not what you meant, feel free to clarify.
Overall, I'm just tired of conservatives who don't just state their case like an adult - "I think this is an unwise use of taxpayer dollars". That's a perfectly valid statement, and an interesting discussion to have. Instead, it always has to get wrapped into this hysterical persecution complex, where the government is somehow maliciously sinning against you personally, thieving and extorting like a cartoon villain. I would take conservatives much more seriously (and would support them on more issues) if the rhetoric wasn't always so moralizing and extreme. Of course, it happens on both sides, but I call out democrats when they do it too, and the conservative whining is particularly strong with this topic.
This isn't about forgiving all student loans. Only the ~400k student loans of disabled people.
And think about the alternative - the goal of helping out disabled people is to prevent them from becoming homeless, resorting to crime, or the other things they might have to resort to. This helps the entire society.
Your original claim is that taxes are theft if you don't get a direct benefit. Is car insurance theft, if you never get in a crash and use it? Remember, it is compulsory for drivers, just like taxes are compulsory for U.S. residents.
The thing is, you don't get to assign new meanings to words to try to make reality what you want it to be. When you say "taxes are theft", what you really mean is "Waahhh, they get something I don't, I'm gonna COMPLAIN". You have every right to whine about people getting things you don't want them to have, but it isn't intellectually honest to arbitrarily redefine words to suit your agenda and invent a moral high ground for yourself.
The dutch sea level data is about as good as it gets actually.
Are you arguing that it's superior to global sea level data, including from satellites? The data might be very good, but there's just no comparison to the scope of data collection we've got currently. My contention is that data continues to get better, so the best data is the most recent. In what ways is the dutch data superior to modern data collection?
As to the wiki citation, I'm talking about sea levels. Not the GISS temp data.I can find a lot of problems with that if you want.
You wanted a citation for my claim that the rate of temperature increase is higher now than ever before. The GISS data demonstrates that.
So lets do something that will actually be productive. Look at the Dutch sea level tables. Look at them. Then explain it.
Provide a link, or better yet, the title of a peer reviewed journal article. I've looked around for "Dutch sea level data" since that's the only citation you've provided, but all I see are a handful of personal blogs from anti-AGW folks, and even those show plenty of data indicating a sea level rise. So why don't you provide an actual citation, and then I'll let you know if I agree or disagree.
As to Greenhouse gas being not up for debate, then do not cite the term to me. Until you are willing to examine a definition I will not accept its use.
Shall we debate the molecular structure of CO2? Should we debate what blackbody radiation is? Should we debate whether infrared radiation exists or is just a government conspiracy? I'm happy to do so, but my point isn't that I'm unwilling to discuss whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's that you seem to be skeptical about whether greenhouse gases exist at all, but this is science that has been settled since the 1800's. You can find lots of simple physics tutorials online that will explain the concept to you. Just google "greenhouse gas demo" and watch one of the youtube videos or perform one of the high-school science labs yourself. It's literally that easy. I'd be happy to keep arguing it, but first you need to actually address why you don't accept the common understanding of absorption spectra and radiative heat transfer that I've described.
What is more, Venus is specifically used as evidence of this climate model. And thus examining the atmosphere of Venus to question that model is entirely valid.
What? I've heard some Bill Nye types referring to Venus as an extreme example of greenhouse warming, but that's just for dumbed-down TV explanations. No scientists are relying on Venus temp data to support their global warming findings. And that's because there really isn't much - the most successful Venus probes have lasted mere hours before breaking down, and almost none of them have actually reached the surface. We don't know the atmospheric composition of Venus very well, we don't understand the temperature very well, and so it quite simply has limited use in a global warming discussion. And, at any rate, what limited data we have indicates that Venus is much warmer than mere solar influx would suggest, so the atmosphere is acting to retain a substantial amount of heat on the planet. Nothing there refutes what we know about greenhouse gases and global warming.
Really, a lot of your statements boil down to "I'm rational which is why I don't question.
Not really. What it boils down to is that in those areas where I'm not an expert, I tend to trust the experts. I'll still learn and listen to the arguments and form my own opinions, but I know from the areas I am somewhat educated in (physics, electronics, and aerospace in varying degrees) that uneducated skeptics often are so clueless that it is difficult to even explain to them precisely how they are wrong. For instance, many, many people expect to build perpetual motion machines or create free energy, an
Not sure if sarcastic, or actually that selfish and shortsighted...
But I'll assume you are serious about this. Ok, so let's suppose that you never have a house fire, not even in your neighborhood. Do you materially benefit from the fire department's existence? Nope.
Ok, now let's assume that you are not disabled, and never become disabled. Do you materially benefit from disability benefits? Nope.
However, as a whole, we've collectively chosen to use our combined resources to help out people with house fires, and help out people that have disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to work. The fact that you might not ever personally benefit from such a policy doesn't make it theft to pay taxes for it. I'm hoping this was sarcastic, though, and I just got whooshed.
All income and wealth related taxes are theft, I am not a hypocrite. I am for Constitutional capitation and excise taxes if you actually care to understand.
Ok, now that we have that out of the way: why is one type of tax theft, but not another? A capitation tax may be levied differently, but other than screwing over the poor disproportionately how is it qualitatively different than an income or wealth tax? Is it optional? Do you not go to jail if you refuse to pay it?
My point is, words have meaning, and distorting their meaning to try to win an emotional point just makes your bias obvious. Rather than saying something simple and true, like "I think taxes should be lower", or "These kinds of taxes are unconstitutional based on my personal interpretation", you tried to make it a moral issue by calling the tax something it isn't: theft. It's the same exact ploy used by the MIAA and RIAA, try to stigmatize a certain behavior (piracy in their case, or income tax in your case) by mislabeling it as a common criminal act.
Now, if you wanted to have a conversation about which tax policy is most likely to improve our economy, or what types of taxation are justified under the constitution, that's an interesting and complex problem to discuss. However, trying to pretend that initiatives such as these are somehow morally corrupt is intellectually inconsistent and sensationalist, and doesn't really help anything.
Is K-12 education theft? Is funding our military theft? Is funding of roads, police, and fire departments theft? Choose carefully. Depending on your answer, you will fit one of two options.
1: Yes, all those things are theft. In which case, go start your own anarchist, theft-free government in Somalia or some other lawless hellhole. I am happy to pay a portion of my income to obtain all the various benefits of civilization, if you aren't, there are plenty of places out there to live out your anarchist fantasies.
2: No, those taxes are not theft. Just this one. In which case, you're a hypocrite, arbitrarily choosing things to complain about and dressing it up with ideological grandstanding. It's the equivalent of childish whining that life isn't fair and somebody is getting something that you aren't. In that case, stop whining, and do what you expect all the minorities and disadvantaged to do: shut up and work for what you want rather than complaining about everyone else that has it easier.
A good developer takes pride in writing the simplest code possible to solve a problem. If another developer cannot understand it, is the problem the reviewer, or the coder?
Define "simplest". Many developers take it to mean the fewest possible lines of code, which is often anything but simple or legible. Much better to write something in 10 lines that is verbose and can be grokked immediately than something in 5 lines that relies on obscure features of the language or non-obvious logic.
1. The old Dutch data is probably pretty good actually.
Sure, there's some decent data - but it wouldn't be honest to claim that our sensing capabilities haven't improved dramatically over the last hundred years. We've got far better quantity and quality of temperature measurements now, so it seems to me that recent data should have more weight than older data.
If you don't cite the Delta you're basing that statement on then it won't be possible to respond to your statement factually
Look at the first graph on the page from the NASA GISS data. The slope is getting steeper. The rate of rise is increasing.
4. As to IR and what is and is not a greenhouse gas... if you examine the other planets in our solar system that have very different chemistries to Earth, you'll find that their temperatures do not vary based on the chemistry but rather their proximity from the star and the density of the atmosphere. The chemistry appears to be all but irrelevant.
This definition of a "greenhouse gas" isn't up for debate - the effect has been understood since the 1800's. 1824 to be exact, see Joseph Fourier's initial discovery and calculations. It is a fact that the Earth would be dramatically cooler without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As in, cold enough to make it impossible for many species to survive. Greenhouse gases are well understood and play a critical part in insulating the Earth.
Planets nearer the star are warmer and planets farther away are cooler. So... I don't think there is anything special about CO2 when worrying about planetary temperature.
The fact that solar insolation impacts temperature is completely orthogonal to the greenhouse gas question. Nobody is asking whether the Earth would be warmer or colder if we changed distance from the sun, the answer is obvious. The question is: Why is the average global temperature of the Earth increasing? We haven't moved closer to the sun in the past 100 years, so it isn't clear what explanation you are trying to offer here.
Also, the fact that you don't see "anything special" about CO2 means you don't understand the fundamental nature of the argument underlying all of this. It's trivial to demonstrate the role that greenhouse gases play in a high school science experiment. Place a temperature sensor in a bin, cover it with insulating layers of differing gases, and shine an incandescent light through the whole thing. Some will insulate better than others. This experiment has been done, many, many times. CO2 is special because its absorption spectra make it a greenhouse gas, and it is the only one that has seen an appreciable change in atmospheric abundance over the time period in question.
5. As to what scientists do or don't do... they're not the only ones in this debate. Bill Nye for example isn't a scientist. He's a media personality. And Al Gore is a politician. And once I've stripped away all the people that aren't actually scientists doing science everything becomes a great deal more open to conjecture.
Don't listen to either of them. That's what I said earlier. Listen to the climate scientists: there is a close to unanimous consensus that the Earth is warming and that the cause is increasing CO2 levels from human activity. Beyond that point, things become less clear, but there just isn't appreciable disagreement within the scientific community on the basic points. Any scientist that could credibly disprove all of his colleagues would be famous and swimming in grant money, but that hasn't happened because the basics are settled and the real meat of the matter has been understood for 100+ years. In effect you're still arguing about whether Michelson and Morley disproved the existence of the aether, while everybody else has moved on to discussing the relativity th
All rockets fly with lots of margin (read: extra fuel) in case of unexpected anomalies during flight. The difference with SpaceX is, when the flight goes as planned, they can use that extra margin to recover an immensely expensive piece of hardware. What's more, not all payloads are using every last pound of capacity in the vehicle. If you can launch 90% of the weight at half the cost thanks to reuse, you've fundamentally changed the market.
This is like getting to reuse a Boeing 747 instead of scrapping it after a single flight. If you think that's just a stunt, you don't have much of an imagination. This is a game changer.
You have to admit that BOTH sides have on occasion replied on some pretty specious evidence to back up their positions.
Agreed. Resorting to sophistry on any side is always a bad play because it really just muddles the issue and contributes to polarization. Even if your side is right, the ends do not justify the means (shitty arguments). Because in any case, sloppy argumentation doesn't really help in the long run.
1. The world is warming. 2. The seas are rising. 3. The climate is changing.
Sure.
4. The rate of sea level rise over the last 200 years has remained pretty consistent which argues against human activity having any impact on sea level increases.
Couple things: The older data is much less precise. Also, the rate of sea level increase (first derivative) has been increasing steadily - we're looking at quadratic increases, certainly. What explains the faster rate of sea level rise if not human activity? The best correlate is CO2.
5. Linking global temperature to human activity is very difficult. We have evidence of the temps going up and down over millions of years. And the current temps are not inconsistent with what they might have been with no humans at all.
Historically we've never seen such a rapid temp increase. That has never been witnessed in the geological record. And you have no substantiation for your last statement - temps "might" have been anything with no humans at all, what we can look at is the historical record and our current data. And the experts on the matter believe that CO2-caused global warming is the best explanation.
6. I don't think there is anything magical about CO2 that makes it more inclined to cause problems in our atmosphere than anything else. I have looked at the light spectrum absorption patterns and compared them to other common gases in our atmosphere and nearly everything in that spectrum is overlapped by other spectrums of more common gases such as water vapor. As such, I question the relevance of CO2 in this discussion at the current concentrations of the gas. 7. The lab experiments that showed that CO2 was a green house gas are misleading in several particulars. First, any gas is a green house gas. Hydrogen can be a greenhouse gas. Helium can be a greenhouse gas... and so on.
Not sure where you are getting this. Not all gases are equal. Most atmospheric gases allow a vast majority of visible light through, but where they differ is in their absorption of IR. Oxygen or CO, for instance, are practically invisible in the IR spectrum, whereas CO2, Methane, and H2O are very opaque. Since incoming light is visible spectrum and outgoing light is IR (due to blackbody radiation from the earth), some gases end up allowing tons of heat to radiate in, but much less heat to radiate back out.
Scientists aren't just picking CO2 to complain about because they hate industry or something - CO2 is the only one that has shown a significant increase in concentration that correlates well with the temperature increase we've observed. Water vapor and methane also qualify as greenhouse gases because of their absorption spectra, but they haven't shown an appreciable change in concentration.
The politics on the issue are obviously tribalistic at this point and in that environment you can't cite how many people support you versus don't. Science is not a democracy.
Don't listen to the politicians, then. Listen to the qualified experts who were studying this long before it became politicized. Would you try to tell the world's leading particle physicists that they haven't actually found the Higgs at the LHC? If you did, and weren't yourself a particle physicist, you would be treated as a cute but annoying enthusiast. Surely you understand that a few hours of reading articles on the internet doesn't outweigh years of study and years of research by hundreds of experts.
Why are you trusting the opinion of yourself and a handful of dubiously-funded detractors over the community of scientists who have devoted years of their lives to studying the climate?
Read what I wrote one more time. I am mocking the OP, who is saying that/. has a leftist bias because it considers defense of Hitler and racism to be bad. He's freely admitting that right = racist Hitler fanbois.
Hmm... maybe you are right, and women are better/cheaper. The thing is, though, even if management wanted to replace their male programming staff with women, I bet there just aren't enough applicants out there. So if we follow this to its conclusion, the big names in tech and politics that are pushing for gender equality in CS school, agree with you and are trying to get cheaper, more productive workers.
And honestly, judging by the engineers I work with, I wouldn't be surprised if the ladies really are cheaper and more productive on average. My anecdotal evidence says that most of the deadweight around here has a Y chromosome.
Since Sony released FF7 on PSN, I keep an old, busted PSP around just to fulfill the occasional Jap RPG craving. If their pricing is reasonable and they find a decent way to update the interfaces to account for the lack of buttons, this could be a very good thing. Although, TBH, I don't really expect them to follow through on either front.
Protip: Exclamation marks are not, in fact, a way to make your statement irrefutable. Instead, in the context of a political argument, the mostly just make it difficult to tell if you are trying to literally represent your own position, or make fun of it.
Fight? You're a leftist, you're terrified of firearms.
Excellent, that's a textbook example of the Hasty Generalization fallacy.
You won't even be in the same room when one is lying unloaded on a table. The Second Amendment is your worst enemy, you want all the power out of the hands of the people and into the federal government.
Your Strawman is coming along very nicely here.
How were you planning on revolting? Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
We move on to the Unsupported Assertion. It's impressive how you manage to totally ignore the examples of social change via peaceful protest... in fact, most of the best examples we have of productive action by the people were mostly or completely nonviolent. Look at the liberation of India, or the Civil Rights Movement. For some examples of what politicking via firearm gets you, check out Syria. The people have plenty of guns there yet their government is less than perfectly representative for some reason...
Brilliant! Topping it off with a stirring finale of Unsupported Assertion and Hasty Generalization all wrapped in a tasty casing of Ad Hominem.
So, other than demonstrating every logical fallacy in the book, did you have another goal with this post? Because the fact that you use such completely deplorable methods of argumentation makes me think that your main goal is to demonstrate your prowess as a blind, partisan ideologue, and undermine the credibility of gun rights advocates. If this isn't your intention, perhaps you should consider presenting a fact-based, rational case for gun rights, rather than typing up another baseless, vitriolic opinion piece.
Depends on the iMac model you got, but the RAM on mine takes all of 2 minutes to swap out, and the hard drive can be upgraded as well - it just requires some extra tools and steps as compared to a desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, most of the Millennials who learned math via Common Core have an irrational fear of change.
Anybody old enough to work at Panda Express probably wasn't educated via Common Core. It has only really taken off in the last few years (at least in my area) so current teenagers probably learned the standard method. So that's really an indictment of math prior to Common Core, and sounds like exactly the kind of outcome it's trying to address: students who can endlessly work long division problems out on paper but have no real intuition for numbers or ability to apply their knowledge outside of the classroom.
How any curriculum is implemented is highly dependent on the district, school, and even the specific teacher. The piece of common core that's most controversial is their different system for arithmetic manipulations, but whether you choose to teach using only that method, or teach using multiple methods in parallel, is more a curriculum choice than something wrong with the system itself.
Also, the teachers I've talked to about it are generally in favor of Common Core. They see it working better with their students, and kids are picking things up faster.
Yes, I have looked at it. My wife taught with it for a few years and observed it working better for many of her students. And, a good friend of mine is a highly acclaimed math teacher (Bill Gates took her out to lunch a few years back to hear her ideas about math education) and she's a fan of common core. Just because something is different than the way you learned it doesn't mean it's worse. Any unfamiliar method will seem more complex at first.
I know whining about common core is a popular pastime among people who have an irrational fear of change, but have you ever taken more than a few seconds to actually look at how common core teaches things? It has much more in common with real mental arithmetic than the standard method we all learned in grade school, and is very intuitive if you actually take a moment to understand it.
It's funny, because most of the complaints I've seen cherry-pick examples to intentionally make common core look more complex, but gloss over the convoluted aspects of the standard method (75+22 makes standard method look obvious, but 99 + 99 has many more steps because of the carrying). I for one (and probably most people) never actually carry numbers mentally - in the previous example I would add 100 + 100 and then subtract two, or some other shortcut that fits with human cognition rather than optimizing to be easy to write on a whiteboard.
Again, I'm against paying someone to not commit crimes.
Again, that's not what this was about. It's about preventing the problems that come along with poverty, crime being just one small sample. Calling it extortion is a textbook example of a strawman fallacy.
I don't think that [the government is a scheming villain] and I don't think most people do either.
Then please stop mischaracterizing social programs as theft or extortion. The hyperbole doesn't help your case.
I don't think giving stupid people money is a good investment for the nation. I say stupid because they either pissed away the money and didn't get a degree, got a worthless degree, or were too disabled to work and therefore shouldn't have taken the money in the first place.
What if I told you that some people become disabled AFTER getting a degree, through no fault of their own? And remember, this is student loan forgiveness ONLY for the disabled, not for a bunch of hippy-dippy art history hipsters. I know a guy who was an engineer and lost his hands in a wood chipper, no freaking joke. Successful contributor to society, probably making good money. But there's no question his ability to earn a wage is now severely impacted, quality of life took a big hit, and it is just simply a freak accident that was in no way his fault. Has a family with several kids too, including some he had adopted. Do he and his family deserve to have the banks come after them?
That's akin to extortion. Give people money so they won't commit crimes against me?
Nope, give people money so they don't become homeless and/or starve to death. Just like we hire firefighters to save people's homes and prevent fire victims from becoming homeless. By your logic, funding the military is extortion, because if we don't pay them foreigners will invade and take over the country. The thing that makes it not extortion is that your democratically elected representative is implementing these policies. You may not agree, but that's democracy - sometimes you are in the majority, sometimes you are in the minority. Don't try to victimize yourself by claiming somehow you are suffering from "extortion". Once again, words have meaning. Use them accordingly.
That's good since I didn't say that. You are quoting the wrong guy.
OP said taxes are theft. You said that my examples weren't theft, but your reasoning was because you get a benefit. Inference is, if you don't get a benefit, it's theft. If that's not what you meant, feel free to clarify.
Overall, I'm just tired of conservatives who don't just state their case like an adult - "I think this is an unwise use of taxpayer dollars". That's a perfectly valid statement, and an interesting discussion to have. Instead, it always has to get wrapped into this hysterical persecution complex, where the government is somehow maliciously sinning against you personally, thieving and extorting like a cartoon villain. I would take conservatives much more seriously (and would support them on more issues) if the rhetoric wasn't always so moralizing and extreme. Of course, it happens on both sides, but I call out democrats when they do it too, and the conservative whining is particularly strong with this topic.
This isn't about forgiving all student loans. Only the ~400k student loans of disabled people.
And think about the alternative - the goal of helping out disabled people is to prevent them from becoming homeless, resorting to crime, or the other things they might have to resort to. This helps the entire society.
Your original claim is that taxes are theft if you don't get a direct benefit. Is car insurance theft, if you never get in a crash and use it? Remember, it is compulsory for drivers, just like taxes are compulsory for U.S. residents.
The thing is, you don't get to assign new meanings to words to try to make reality what you want it to be. When you say "taxes are theft", what you really mean is "Waahhh, they get something I don't, I'm gonna COMPLAIN". You have every right to whine about people getting things you don't want them to have, but it isn't intellectually honest to arbitrarily redefine words to suit your agenda and invent a moral high ground for yourself.
The dutch sea level data is about as good as it gets actually.
Are you arguing that it's superior to global sea level data, including from satellites? The data might be very good, but there's just no comparison to the scope of data collection we've got currently. My contention is that data continues to get better, so the best data is the most recent. In what ways is the dutch data superior to modern data collection?
As to the wiki citation, I'm talking about sea levels. Not the GISS temp data.I can find a lot of problems with that if you want.
You wanted a citation for my claim that the rate of temperature increase is higher now than ever before. The GISS data demonstrates that.
So lets do something that will actually be productive. Look at the Dutch sea level tables. Look at them. Then explain it.
Provide a link, or better yet, the title of a peer reviewed journal article. I've looked around for "Dutch sea level data" since that's the only citation you've provided, but all I see are a handful of personal blogs from anti-AGW folks, and even those show plenty of data indicating a sea level rise. So why don't you provide an actual citation, and then I'll let you know if I agree or disagree.
As to Greenhouse gas being not up for debate, then do not cite the term to me. Until you are willing to examine a definition I will not accept its use.
Shall we debate the molecular structure of CO2? Should we debate what blackbody radiation is? Should we debate whether infrared radiation exists or is just a government conspiracy? I'm happy to do so, but my point isn't that I'm unwilling to discuss whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's that you seem to be skeptical about whether greenhouse gases exist at all, but this is science that has been settled since the 1800's. You can find lots of simple physics tutorials online that will explain the concept to you. Just google "greenhouse gas demo" and watch one of the youtube videos or perform one of the high-school science labs yourself. It's literally that easy. I'd be happy to keep arguing it, but first you need to actually address why you don't accept the common understanding of absorption spectra and radiative heat transfer that I've described.
What is more, Venus is specifically used as evidence of this climate model. And thus examining the atmosphere of Venus to question that model is entirely valid.
What? I've heard some Bill Nye types referring to Venus as an extreme example of greenhouse warming, but that's just for dumbed-down TV explanations. No scientists are relying on Venus temp data to support their global warming findings. And that's because there really isn't much - the most successful Venus probes have lasted mere hours before breaking down, and almost none of them have actually reached the surface. We don't know the atmospheric composition of Venus very well, we don't understand the temperature very well, and so it quite simply has limited use in a global warming discussion. And, at any rate, what limited data we have indicates that Venus is much warmer than mere solar influx would suggest, so the atmosphere is acting to retain a substantial amount of heat on the planet. Nothing there refutes what we know about greenhouse gases and global warming.
Really, a lot of your statements boil down to "I'm rational which is why I don't question.
Not really. What it boils down to is that in those areas where I'm not an expert, I tend to trust the experts. I'll still learn and listen to the arguments and form my own opinions, but I know from the areas I am somewhat educated in (physics, electronics, and aerospace in varying degrees) that uneducated skeptics often are so clueless that it is difficult to even explain to them precisely how they are wrong. For instance, many, many people expect to build perpetual motion machines or create free energy, an
Not sure if sarcastic, or actually that selfish and shortsighted...
But I'll assume you are serious about this. Ok, so let's suppose that you never have a house fire, not even in your neighborhood. Do you materially benefit from the fire department's existence? Nope.
Ok, now let's assume that you are not disabled, and never become disabled. Do you materially benefit from disability benefits? Nope.
However, as a whole, we've collectively chosen to use our combined resources to help out people with house fires, and help out people that have disabilities that make it difficult or impossible to work. The fact that you might not ever personally benefit from such a policy doesn't make it theft to pay taxes for it. I'm hoping this was sarcastic, though, and I just got whooshed.
All income and wealth related taxes are theft, I am not a hypocrite. I am for Constitutional capitation and excise taxes if you actually care to understand.
Ok, now that we have that out of the way: why is one type of tax theft, but not another? A capitation tax may be levied differently, but other than screwing over the poor disproportionately how is it qualitatively different than an income or wealth tax? Is it optional? Do you not go to jail if you refuse to pay it?
My point is, words have meaning, and distorting their meaning to try to win an emotional point just makes your bias obvious. Rather than saying something simple and true, like "I think taxes should be lower", or "These kinds of taxes are unconstitutional based on my personal interpretation", you tried to make it a moral issue by calling the tax something it isn't: theft. It's the same exact ploy used by the MIAA and RIAA, try to stigmatize a certain behavior (piracy in their case, or income tax in your case) by mislabeling it as a common criminal act.
Now, if you wanted to have a conversation about which tax policy is most likely to improve our economy, or what types of taxation are justified under the constitution, that's an interesting and complex problem to discuss. However, trying to pretend that initiatives such as these are somehow morally corrupt is intellectually inconsistent and sensationalist, and doesn't really help anything.
Is K-12 education theft? Is funding our military theft? Is funding of roads, police, and fire departments theft?
Choose carefully. Depending on your answer, you will fit one of two options.
1: Yes, all those things are theft. In which case, go start your own anarchist, theft-free government in Somalia or some other lawless hellhole. I am happy to pay a portion of my income to obtain all the various benefits of civilization, if you aren't, there are plenty of places out there to live out your anarchist fantasies.
2: No, those taxes are not theft. Just this one. In which case, you're a hypocrite, arbitrarily choosing things to complain about and dressing it up with ideological grandstanding. It's the equivalent of childish whining that life isn't fair and somebody is getting something that you aren't. In that case, stop whining, and do what you expect all the minorities and disadvantaged to do: shut up and work for what you want rather than complaining about everyone else that has it easier.
A good developer takes pride in writing the simplest code possible to solve a problem. If another developer cannot understand it, is the problem the reviewer, or the coder?
Define "simplest". Many developers take it to mean the fewest possible lines of code, which is often anything but simple or legible. Much better to write something in 10 lines that is verbose and can be grokked immediately than something in 5 lines that relies on obscure features of the language or non-obvious logic.
1. The old Dutch data is probably pretty good actually.
Sure, there's some decent data - but it wouldn't be honest to claim that our sensing capabilities haven't improved dramatically over the last hundred years. We've got far better quantity and quality of temperature measurements now, so it seems to me that recent data should have more weight than older data.
If you don't cite the Delta you're basing that statement on then it won't be possible to respond to your statement factually
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Look at the first graph on the page from the NASA GISS data. The slope is getting steeper. The rate of rise is increasing.
4. As to IR and what is and is not a greenhouse gas... if you examine the other planets in our solar system that have very different chemistries to Earth, you'll find that their temperatures do not vary based on the chemistry but rather their proximity from the star and the density of the atmosphere. The chemistry appears to be all but irrelevant.
This definition of a "greenhouse gas" isn't up for debate - the effect has been understood since the 1800's. 1824 to be exact, see Joseph Fourier's initial discovery and calculations. It is a fact that the Earth would be dramatically cooler without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As in, cold enough to make it impossible for many species to survive. Greenhouse gases are well understood and play a critical part in insulating the Earth.
Planets nearer the star are warmer and planets farther away are cooler. So... I don't think there is anything special about CO2 when worrying about planetary temperature.
The fact that solar insolation impacts temperature is completely orthogonal to the greenhouse gas question. Nobody is asking whether the Earth would be warmer or colder if we changed distance from the sun, the answer is obvious. The question is: Why is the average global temperature of the Earth increasing? We haven't moved closer to the sun in the past 100 years, so it isn't clear what explanation you are trying to offer here.
Also, the fact that you don't see "anything special" about CO2 means you don't understand the fundamental nature of the argument underlying all of this. It's trivial to demonstrate the role that greenhouse gases play in a high school science experiment. Place a temperature sensor in a bin, cover it with insulating layers of differing gases, and shine an incandescent light through the whole thing. Some will insulate better than others. This experiment has been done, many, many times. CO2 is special because its absorption spectra make it a greenhouse gas, and it is the only one that has seen an appreciable change in atmospheric abundance over the time period in question.
5. As to what scientists do or don't do... they're not the only ones in this debate. Bill Nye for example isn't a scientist. He's a media personality. And Al Gore is a politician. And once I've stripped away all the people that aren't actually scientists doing science everything becomes a great deal more open to conjecture.
Don't listen to either of them. That's what I said earlier. Listen to the climate scientists: there is a close to unanimous consensus that the Earth is warming and that the cause is increasing CO2 levels from human activity. Beyond that point, things become less clear, but there just isn't appreciable disagreement within the scientific community on the basic points. Any scientist that could credibly disprove all of his colleagues would be famous and swimming in grant money, but that hasn't happened because the basics are settled and the real meat of the matter has been understood for 100+ years. In effect you're still arguing about whether Michelson and Morley disproved the existence of the aether, while everybody else has moved on to discussing the relativity th
It's automated. No humans aboard. That fits the commonly accepted definition of drone.
All rockets fly with lots of margin (read: extra fuel) in case of unexpected anomalies during flight. The difference with SpaceX is, when the flight goes as planned, they can use that extra margin to recover an immensely expensive piece of hardware. What's more, not all payloads are using every last pound of capacity in the vehicle. If you can launch 90% of the weight at half the cost thanks to reuse, you've fundamentally changed the market.
This is like getting to reuse a Boeing 747 instead of scrapping it after a single flight. If you think that's just a stunt, you don't have much of an imagination. This is a game changer.
You have to admit that BOTH sides have on occasion replied on some pretty specious evidence to back up their positions.
Agreed. Resorting to sophistry on any side is always a bad play because it really just muddles the issue and contributes to polarization. Even if your side is right, the ends do not justify the means (shitty arguments). Because in any case, sloppy argumentation doesn't really help in the long run.
1. The world is warming.
2. The seas are rising.
3. The climate is changing.
Sure.
4. The rate of sea level rise over the last 200 years has remained pretty consistent which argues against human activity having any impact on sea level increases.
Couple things: The older data is much less precise. Also, the rate of sea level increase (first derivative) has been increasing steadily - we're looking at quadratic increases, certainly. What explains the faster rate of sea level rise if not human activity? The best correlate is CO2.
5. Linking global temperature to human activity is very difficult. We have evidence of the temps going up and down over millions of years. And the current temps are not inconsistent with what they might have been with no humans at all.
Historically we've never seen such a rapid temp increase. That has never been witnessed in the geological record. And you have no substantiation for your last statement - temps "might" have been anything with no humans at all, what we can look at is the historical record and our current data. And the experts on the matter believe that CO2-caused global warming is the best explanation.
6. I don't think there is anything magical about CO2 that makes it more inclined to cause problems in our atmosphere than anything else. I have looked at the light spectrum absorption patterns and compared them to other common gases in our atmosphere and nearly everything in that spectrum is overlapped by other spectrums of more common gases such as water vapor. As such, I question the relevance of CO2 in this discussion at the current concentrations of the gas.
7. The lab experiments that showed that CO2 was a green house gas are misleading in several particulars. First, any gas is a green house gas. Hydrogen can be a greenhouse gas. Helium can be a greenhouse gas... and so on.
Not sure where you are getting this. Not all gases are equal. Most atmospheric gases allow a vast majority of visible light through, but where they differ is in their absorption of IR. Oxygen or CO, for instance, are practically invisible in the IR spectrum, whereas CO2, Methane, and H2O are very opaque. Since incoming light is visible spectrum and outgoing light is IR (due to blackbody radiation from the earth), some gases end up allowing tons of heat to radiate in, but much less heat to radiate back out.
Scientists aren't just picking CO2 to complain about because they hate industry or something - CO2 is the only one that has shown a significant increase in concentration that correlates well with the temperature increase we've observed. Water vapor and methane also qualify as greenhouse gases because of their absorption spectra, but they haven't shown an appreciable change in concentration.
The politics on the issue are obviously tribalistic at this point and in that environment you can't cite how many people support you versus don't. Science is not a democracy.
Don't listen to the politicians, then. Listen to the qualified experts who were studying this long before it became politicized. Would you try to tell the world's leading particle physicists that they haven't actually found the Higgs at the LHC? If you did, and weren't yourself a particle physicist, you would be treated as a cute but annoying enthusiast. Surely you understand that a few hours of reading articles on the internet doesn't outweigh years of study and years of research by hundreds of experts.
Why are you trusting the opinion of yourself and a handful of dubiously-funded detractors over the community of scientists who have devoted years of their lives to studying the climate?
Besides, what are we going to do? Sit around and play D&D all day eating machine made pizzas?
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Read what I wrote one more time. I am mocking the OP, who is saying that /. has a leftist bias because it considers defense of Hitler and racism to be bad. He's freely admitting that right = racist Hitler fanbois.
Read. I am mocking the OP, who is saying that /. has a leftist bias because it considers defense of Hitler and racism to be bad.
Read, please. I am mocking the OP, who is saying that /. has a leftist bias because it considers defense of Hitler and racism to be bad.
Hmm... maybe you are right, and women are better/cheaper. The thing is, though, even if management wanted to replace their male programming staff with women, I bet there just aren't enough applicants out there. So if we follow this to its conclusion, the big names in tech and politics that are pushing for gender equality in CS school, agree with you and are trying to get cheaper, more productive workers.
And honestly, judging by the engineers I work with, I wouldn't be surprised if the ladies really are cheaper and more productive on average. My anecdotal evidence says that most of the deadweight around here has a Y chromosome.
Since Sony released FF7 on PSN, I keep an old, busted PSP around just to fulfill the occasional Jap RPG craving. If their pricing is reasonable and they find a decent way to update the interfaces to account for the lack of buttons, this could be a very good thing. Although, TBH, I don't really expect them to follow through on either front.
Protip: Exclamation marks are not, in fact, a way to make your statement irrefutable. Instead, in the context of a political argument, the mostly just make it difficult to tell if you are trying to literally represent your own position, or make fun of it.
Fight? You're a leftist, you're terrified of firearms.
Excellent, that's a textbook example of the Hasty Generalization fallacy.
You won't even be in the same room when one is lying unloaded on a table. The Second Amendment is your worst enemy, you want all the power out of the hands of the people and into the federal government.
Your Strawman is coming along very nicely here.
How were you planning on revolting? Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
We move on to the Unsupported Assertion. It's impressive how you manage to totally ignore the examples of social change via peaceful protest... in fact, most of the best examples we have of productive action by the people were mostly or completely nonviolent. Look at the liberation of India, or the Civil Rights Movement. For some examples of what politicking via firearm gets you, check out Syria. The people have plenty of guns there yet their government is less than perfectly representative for some reason...
Moreover you're physical cowards unless you're provoking a few punches from someone while being videotaped. But you're tigers when it comes to running down the streets smashing out the windows of every car with Republican bumper stickers on it.
Brilliant! Topping it off with a stirring finale of Unsupported Assertion and Hasty Generalization all wrapped in a tasty casing of Ad Hominem.
So, other than demonstrating every logical fallacy in the book, did you have another goal with this post? Because the fact that you use such completely deplorable methods of argumentation makes me think that your main goal is to demonstrate your prowess as a blind, partisan ideologue, and undermine the credibility of gun rights advocates. If this isn't your intention, perhaps you should consider presenting a fact-based, rational case for gun rights, rather than typing up another baseless, vitriolic opinion piece.
Depends on the iMac model you got, but the RAM on mine takes all of 2 minutes to swap out, and the hard drive can be upgraded as well - it just requires some extra tools and steps as compared to a desktop.