You really need to look at the gas concentrations in the atmosphere rather than a single slice of human behavior, and the relevant concentrations have been growing exponentially throughout human history.
> This isssue has be politicized to the point that even with the three or four recent findings that seem to support the case that our quickness to attribute shifts in climate to the actions of man may be completely off base, the side screaming bloody murder for the last 10 years will never admit that they may have been wrong.
> Having said that, I am sympathetic to the evironmental movement, there's just nothing I hate more than bad science that persists due to politics.
Thing is, we have good sound physics to explain how various gas mixtures deal with radiated heat, and we have good sound evidence that the amounts of some of the relevant gasses in the atmosphere have grown exponentially as civilization has progressed.
Where's the bad science you're talking about? Do you dispute scientists' claims about the role of atmospheric gasses in the temperatures of other planets?
Just because the earth's temperature fluctuates as a background noise, doesn't mean we should ignore what we're doing to the atmosphere. Yes, distinguishing signal from noise is going to be difficult until the signal is so strong we're fuxored. But there's lots of good science in this beyond the daily weather report.
> This is the same country that is now so indignant about the Iraqis using suicide bombers to defend against an invader, right?
I can't help but notice that a couple of people tried to obscure the issue by discussing the terrorists who attack civilians rather than the Iraqis who made suicide attacks against soldiers invading their country (like the pilots were trained to do), and that a couple of others tried their hand at splitting hairs over the definition of suicide, or over which wars make suicide justifiable.
Our species is very good at rationalizing the view that something is OK for "us" but not OK for "them". Should we also discuss the complaints about showing dead soldiers and POWs on television, which both sides did in the recent war?
Give up the nationalism, folks. A nuclear-tipped world can't afford it.
> And then we have the moron listed above, who is still clinging like grim death to the "war for oil" mantra. Yeah, we're in there for oil. Instead of just buying the oil from Saddam, we thought it would be cheaper to mobilize our army and risk blowing the infrastructure to kingom come.
Notice that if we had just bought the oil from Saddam then the profits of the trade would have gone to foreign energy companies instead of US energy companies. With that in mind, read this, and take particular notice of what happened when the Shah of Iran needed the USA to buy more of their oil from him to boost his revenues.
US meddling in the Persian Gulf hasn't historically bene about oil per se, it has been about who profits from the trade of the oil.
> > many have been verbally warned that phrases like: "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" and "needle exchange," may cause the government to withhold grant money.
> Instead they were requested to use phrases like "hookers", "faggots", "buttfucking" and "junkies".
And for Heaven's sake, don't even think about recommending "spank the monkey" as part of an abstinence program!
> I don't know about you but when I'm reading a webpage, I want to concentrate on the webpage, not everything below it. When I'm writing a report, I want to concentrate on my word processor, not all the windows below it.
Spoken like a man who doesn't use nude babes for his wallpaper.
> No, no, no. You see, if we legalize them drugs will be everywhere.
Maybe you're wisecracking, but if not... drugs are already everywhere.
Did you think all those commercials on TV trying to scare people off drugs by playing the terrorism card were on the air because we don't have an epidemic drug problem?
> So hats of to living in Canada the home of the free.... until the US invades because we are thinking of legalizing possession of marihuana. As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.
Legalize it and the money will quit going into the black market.
> Someone should inform the telcos that they cannot offer this service anymore.
Wouldn't a caller ID blocking honeypot be fun? Have a device that suppresses the ring on your end if the ID is blocked, but returns the sound of a ring to the other end for however long the caller cares to listen.
Probably illegal though. Probably illegal for me to suggest it.
> It will go as far as we allow the politicians to take it. Tell them what you think via snail mail or by phone, if that does not work tell them at the polls!
Votes are anonymous; your plan is probably illegal in Michagan.
Slashdot Mirror
> Too late. In Western societies, more people believe in Global Warming than believe in God.
Some of us think that's a good sign, given the relative amounts of evidence for global warming and the existence of God.
> It might be useful to have a link to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [www.ipcc.ch]
You refer, of course to the Interworld Police Coordination Company ?
... and that just sounds fishy to me --
You get "explosive growth" on any slice you look at> They claim explosive growth post 1980 -- when the BRUNT of the industrail growth was PRE-1980
Ponder the marvels of the exponential curve:
After marvelling at that, go check out "Past and future CO2 atmospheric concentrations" and other plots from the IPCC's latest report.
And while the trend toward industrialization may have flattened out in the industrialized nations, look what's going on with the forests in the developing nations right now. See also "CO2 concentration, temperature, and sea level continue to rise long after emissions are reduced".
You really need to look at the gas concentrations in the atmosphere rather than a single slice of human behavior, and the relevant concentrations have been growing exponentially throughout human history.
> This isssue has be politicized to the point that even with the three or four recent findings that seem to support the case that our quickness to attribute shifts in climate to the actions of man may be completely off base, the side screaming bloody murder for the last 10 years will never admit that they may have been wrong.
> Having said that, I am sympathetic to the evironmental movement, there's just nothing I hate more than bad science that persists due to politics.
Thing is, we have good sound physics to explain how various gas mixtures deal with radiated heat, and we have good sound evidence that the amounts of some of the relevant gasses in the atmosphere have grown exponentially as civilization has progressed.
Where's the bad science you're talking about? Do you dispute scientists' claims about the role of atmospheric gasses in the temperatures of other planets?
Just because the earth's temperature fluctuates as a background noise, doesn't mean we should ignore what we're doing to the atmosphere. Yes, distinguishing signal from noise is going to be difficult until the signal is so strong we're fuxored. But there's lots of good science in this beyond the daily weather report.
> ActiveX controls that can have full access to your computer
> An e-mail client with HTML support so you can view spam as it was intended
And a virtual machine running Windows XP, so you can fully enjoy all the viruses you're getting bombarded with.
> This is the same country that is now so indignant about the Iraqis using suicide bombers to defend against an invader, right?
I can't help but notice that a couple of people tried to obscure the issue by discussing the terrorists who attack civilians rather than the Iraqis who made suicide attacks against soldiers invading their country (like the pilots were trained to do), and that a couple of others tried their hand at splitting hairs over the definition of suicide, or over which wars make suicide justifiable.
Our species is very good at rationalizing the view that something is OK for "us" but not OK for "them". Should we also discuss the complaints about showing dead soldiers and POWs on television, which both sides did in the recent war?
Give up the nationalism, folks. A nuclear-tipped world can't afford it.
> And then we have the moron listed above, who is still clinging like grim death to the "war for oil" mantra. Yeah, we're in there for oil. Instead of just buying the oil from Saddam, we thought it would be cheaper to mobilize our army and risk blowing the infrastructure to kingom come.
Notice that if we had just bought the oil from Saddam then the profits of the trade would have gone to foreign energy companies instead of US energy companies. With that in mind, read this, and take particular notice of what happened when the Shah of Iran needed the USA to buy more of their oil from him to boost his revenues.
US meddling in the Persian Gulf hasn't historically bene about oil per se, it has been about who profits from the trade of the oil.
This is the same country that is now so indignant about the Iraqis using suicide bombers to defend against an invader, right?
> You left Ruby off the scripting language list.
Oh, the Humanity!
> > many have been verbally warned that phrases like: "sex workers," "men who sleep with men," "anal sex" and "needle exchange," may cause the government to withhold grant money.
> Instead they were requested to use phrases like "hookers", "faggots", "buttfucking" and "junkies".
And for Heaven's sake, don't even think about recommending "spank the monkey" as part of an abstinence program!
Ah, clever! Post your talkback twice and you can get more than the legal karma limit for it.
And the editors can hardly complain about double posting! (Ehrm, you wouldn't happen to be one of the editors, would you?)
> On an interesting side note, reindeer is one of the few words that doesn't follow the "I before E except after C"
From Usenet:
> What makes the whole repeat-ness of this story even worse is that there is a vote about it up right now!
OK, so Slashdot has moved from being a discussion site for stories posted at The Register to being a discussion site for Slashdot polls.
> But alas, my internet connection was too slow and I couldn't get FP!
I always beat the rush by attaching my FP to the end of the previous story.
> one wonders why the book doesn't bear the title "Essential UNIX Administration"
Because you don't administer Windows systems, you drive them.
> I don't know about you but when I'm reading a webpage, I want to concentrate on the webpage, not everything below it. When I'm writing a report, I want to concentrate on my word processor, not all the windows below it.
Spoken like a man who doesn't use nude babes for his wallpaper.
> No, no, no. You see, if we legalize them drugs will be everywhere.
Maybe you're wisecracking, but if not... drugs are already everywhere.
Did you think all those commercials on TV trying to scare people off drugs by playing the terrorism card were on the air because we don't have an epidemic drug problem?
> And now we're supposed to trust 'Trusted Computing'?
"Trusted Computing" is supposed to fix it where content vendors can trust us.
Or rather, trust our computers.
> So does 'Shah' as in Shah of Iran.
No, 'Shah' is from a native Persian word, and has cognate forms in Sanskrit.
IIRC an earlier form of 'Shah' was already in use for the kings of the old Persian Empire, Cyrus and Xerxes and that lot.
> Anyone who finds anonymous disagreement more satisfying than communication and sharing of ideas deserves what they get.
When in doubt, assume it's a joke.
> It's much easier to mod me down than to post an intelligent reply.
More satisfying, too!
> One question per post please, and try to avoid asking questions that could be answered with a little online research.
And don't read this article in Michigan.
> So hats of to living in Canada the home of the free.... until the US invades because we are thinking of legalizing possession of marihuana. As you know marihuana is a drug and drugs support terrorism.
Legalize it and the money will quit going into the black market.
> Someone should inform the telcos that they cannot offer this service anymore.
Wouldn't a caller ID blocking honeypot be fun? Have a device that suppresses the ring on your end if the ID is blocked, but returns the sound of a ring to the other end for however long the caller cares to listen.
Probably illegal though. Probably illegal for me to suggest it.
> It will go as far as we allow the politicians to take it. Tell them what you think via snail mail or by phone, if that does not work tell them at the polls!
Votes are anonymous; your plan is probably illegal in Michagan.