On 1: Maybe this is simplistic, but I envisioned something like a signature gathering phase. If a candidate or 3rd party gets enough signatures, instant public funding and full access to the public TV debates/ad spots.
On 2: I could see a board of directors for the public news station being directly held accountable by obtaining their seats with an election. Of course, unless item 1 isn't addressed, electing them won't help. So it wouldn't be owned by the federal government. More like a public non-profit organization who's member's are allowed to vote.
The federal government's role would be the creation of law dictating how the process would work, and being involved in the tax collection and distribution.
1. Get the money out of politics: public funds for elections only, equal air time, no campaign contributions, severely limit what private organisations can buy in terms of air/radio time concerning elections and political issues. 2. Big increase in public news: national public radio needs more funds and a prime time news tv show that is not advertiser supported. We need news that isn't controlled by profit, nor by politically motivated groups. 3. Education: between the misinformation flowing from for profit news shows (left and right), and the generally poor state of public education, our citizens as a whole are pretty ignorant. I really don't know what can be done to improve education, but I think it should be given a higher priority.
He said "becoming more efficient", but besides that, of course fossil fuels and coal will have a tremendous cost advantage over newer 'green' tech: oil/coal already has its infrastructure built.
Pretend we have no electricity, and have to build everything from scratch. Factor in costs of going to war, pollution, pipelines, refineries, coal plants, gas pumps on every corner... that would be a far comparison to 'green' energy.
"Few would argue against having a governement option"
Unfortunately, Fox news and other conservative media outlets are 100% opposed to even having an option.
Usually arguments like, it will drive private insurers out of business. Yeah... just like the post office has put Fedex and UPS out of business.
Then there's the "against my principles" / anti-socialism / no free lunch argument. To which I normally respond, the uninsured already have a free lunch at any emergency room in the country. That care is extremely expensive, and drives the costs up for everyone. It would be much cheaper to just give the uninsured preventative care.
"No, if the the model's unknown variables can change the outcome dramatically, then the model is faulty, and cannot be relied upon for accurate results."
The model isn't necessarily worthless just because the output has a wide range. It depends a lot on what the unknowns are, and whether they can eventually become known.
In addition, the model might be correct in describing a range of possible outcomes. You can then combine that with economic models that describe the consequences of throwing tons of money at the problem/regulating co2, etc.., versus doing nothing and the economic impact of that wide range of global warming predictions.
One of the problems I see with this whole debate, is that "it will destroy the economy" to deal with global warming, is rarely backed up with any economic models.
The climate scientists are doing their best to model things, where's the corresponding economic models?
They don't care if it is true or not. Business, as a whole, is in the game to make money, and not worry about the consequences.
Have you ever seen a business discover something horrible with its business practices, that was harming/maiming something/someone, and voluntarily stopped it, despite being in the legal right?
There's been a few corporations that have a 'green' image, and they try to maintain it, but the vast majority will continue to do something known to be harmful until they get caught. And even if caught, will continue to do it unless there are legal or financial consequences.
"Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality."
While that is true, and we can see in the past that some theories that had overwhelming consensus were later proven wrong, if you had to bet today, would you bet against the consensus? We always have incomplete evidence, and politics will never go away. So how long do you wait for it be more clear?
Well, I do not think they are separate issues. The cost for all of us is very much related to emergency care.
I worked in a hospital for 5 years. Often I worked with systems that handled budgets, billing, etc..
When an uninsured person waits until they are sick enough for emergency care, the bill is huge, and unpaid. And the hospital must make up for that by charging more for all their services.
That drives up the cost of nearly ever aspect of healthcare. From the cost of an aspirin, to the cost of a physicians services.
Being more efficient and driving down costs is important, but only on the administrative side of things. The actual operations of most hospitals and clinics is super efficient. They have to be to make any profit or break even. I watched the hospital I work at cut employees time and time again, trim its belt, reduce services that weren't making money, etc.. etc.. They did this for 5 years, and finally went out of business.
Their moral mission (retaining some vital public services despite making no money on them, like dialysis), and state/gov regulations requring emergency care for all, was just too much to handle.
You should watch Food, inc. the documentary, or many of the other excellent movies that have described why we are so unhealthy.
There are a ton of factors, ranging from education, to farming and food preparation practices, changing the natural diets of livestock, etc..
Basically resulting in massive quantities of cheap, and very unhealthy fattening food. It is way more expensive to live on healthy good tasting food, if you are unable to spend a lot of time preparing/cooking from scratch.
Massive profit does lead to a lot of cutting edge research and top notch facilities.
From what I've read though, a lot of our cutting edge stuff only helps people with very rare diseases, like rare cancers, etc..
So we are probably better at treating 1% of medical problems, while the cost of the other 99% of medical problems costs more per person to treat than anywhere on earth.
"(although we end up paying for them anyway when they go to the emergency room: no one can be turned away without treatment, which is good), but shouldn't we try to solve the real problems that are in the system, instead of trying to rewrite the whole thing from scratch? There are relatively simple solutions to all these problems,"
Whats the simple solution to the emergency care issue to drive costs down? Curious what your take is on the matter.
"I don't mind subsidizing someone who is missing a leg or arm or is paralyzed. What I don't like is subsidizing people which have a problem with the area between their ears."
You don't seem to understand that despite not having free public health care, you are in fact subsidising people without health insurance.
You see, without health care, the poor, lazy, mentally ill, illegal aliens, etc.. all wait until they are extremely sick, and use an emergency room, often with long stays and huge bills. By law, hospitals must provide emergency care. They attempt to make up for this massive loss, by increasing the costs for those that can pay.
So all of us working folks pay way more for health care than a true free market system would otherwise dictate. We pay more per person for health care than any nation on earth, yet the WHO rated us 37th for effectiveness of that care and overall health.
So here's the two general choices for bringing the cost of health care down: 1. Remove the laws requiring free emergency care. 2. Give people that don't have health care, free insurance plans, so we are treating by prevention and general care, rather than paying for emergency care.
Now obviously health care is incredibly complex. But that is one of the primary factors driving up the cost.
Insurance companies in the "free market" now, have one job: maximize profit. They are for profit companies. That means denying as many claims as they can, while making insurance premiums/plans as costly as the market will allow.
Without a public option, there really is no competition to bring the costs down. And when you add morality into the equation, and have laws guaranteeing emergency care for anyone, you further push the cost up.
"No matter your political leanings, it is hard to argue that NASA does not provide a great return on investment. But with our myopic tendencies (Congress and Business) no one has the balls to invest what is needed to continue long-term success."
I don't disagree, but has anyone produced numbers on the return on that investment?
"However, looking at the amazing complexities of life, I still feel that given the long odds, the 'completely random permutation moderated by natural selection' isn't wholly sufficient to explain all life either."
You accept the known science, and find the weight of evidence for evolution and a old universe convincing, but attribute God to anything that science has not yet full explained.
As science marches on, you'll have less places to stick a gods hand in the processes. I've always felt that the proper way to view God is the answer to our purpose in life, the "why" of life, and not the "how".
Attaching a god to any part of the "how" it happened, means that as science discovers more, God has less room to exist in the evolving worldview.
"Even if this computer we make was capable of thinking at the level of 2x human, it will take many machines a long time before progressing to the next level of understanding of a complex non-linear phenomenon such as intelligence."
The major difference, is that we could copy/share every good 'result' of that machines 'thinking' to thousands of clones of that machine. It really would take off fast, assuming sufficient hardware to run any number of virtual brains and the ability for them to share data.
"But what if the brain works by exploiting all of the effects of molecules, proteins, ions, electrical charges, even quantum effects at a molecular level?"
A bird has all that going on, and a highly complex wing system with tiny muscles all firing at precise times, etc.. and yet we can fly using many different methods (propellers, helicopters, jets, etc..)
Many of the brain modeling efforts are on understand enough about the input/output to build a model that satisfies them. The scale if imaging is getting better and better, so input/output is being measured at increasing tiny levels. The model merely needs to measure in/out, and refine itself as new imaging techniques allow finer grained measurements.
It will eventually be possible to measure the response, motion, etc.. of the tiniest parts of the brain, down to atoms, in response to stimuli. At that point, modeling learning (watch the brain while someone learns, etc..), fear, image recognition, etc.. will lead to highly accurate models.
We might miss a quantum effect or two even then, but if what comes in and what comes out is pretty close, it might pass a turing test or two:)
The largest problem I've seen, is that the interviewer has either a firm grasp of interview techniques (to determine personality, quirks, responsibility, motivation, etc..) or they have the technical knowledge to evaluate the person's technical skill...but rarely does the interviewer have both those skill sets.
Companies often have multiple people interview one candidate, but what is often lacking in that process, is an effective way to combine the results from those multiple interviews into a complete picture.
A person is in many ways, more than the sum of their parts. Unexpected outcomes can be produced when all those parts are working as a whole. Interviewing seems to be about evaluate each part, but rarely the whole.
Seriously though, what is going in the UK? Does the majority of the population actually want to live in a society like '1984' or 'V is for Vendetta'?
That aside, where is the social worker in all of this? If the kids are not being cared for, not sleeping well and/or missing school, they should be removed from that home.
"Term limits result in a legislature that doesn't know WTF it's doing at any time. "
How often is the turnover in AZ? Oregon and Washington had senators/congressmen that were basically lifers in DC.
If the people like you, you stay in. Term limits are in place to allow the people to vote out crappy legislators on a regular basis, and to hopefully provide a steady stream of new ideas.
Congressmen/Senators do not need to know how to write law. The need to know how to express the needs and views of their constituents, and then have their offices filled with highly qualified lawyers draft up legislation.
You do realize that the only reason there are "sides" to this issue at all, are due to the media framing everything in a "debate"/"cross-fire" format right? And of course the natural political divide in Washington.
Scientists as a whole are not divided on the basics of the issue. There really are no "sides" to the issue. There is only the data. Explanations for the data are overwhelming in favor that the earth is warming and man is largely at fault.
However, that does not make it true. Probably true. But a new theory could come out tomorrow to explain that data, and if it does a better job, presto, new view.
Until then, stop pretending that there are "sides" to this issue.
Up higher in the thread someone linked to a study that says that 80% of the warming can be explained by some little el-nino oscillation cycle. 6 month per reviewed journal. New theory. Other scientists will evaluate it, and if it keeps explaining the incoming data more accurately, you'll see the scientific community begin to hold that as "gospel".
"âoeHe is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist,â Kulongoski said. "
He's speaking as if he's speaking for the entire state, officially. The governor is just saying, "No, you don't". I work for a college in Oregon, as their single "job title x". 7,000 employees, and I have unique job title. If I started acting like I was speaking for the state on issues related to my job title... I'd probably get slapped down also.
Did his minority stance on global warming trigger the Governor to look into it? Most likely. But it doesn't change the fact that he should not be speaking for the state of oregon, which his title and papers imply.
Next one....Dyson.... a physicist.......
"Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred âoecarbon-eating trees,â"
Do you think it is perhaps because he is an aging PHYSICIST proposing "carbon eating trees" that he is being ridiculed a little bit? Come on.....
Serious work with serious data backing it up is not being rejected. People overstepping the bounds of their job titles, or people overstepping their knowledge base and providing no solid evidence or theories are the people being slapped down.
"If anyone, including noted scientists, say anything remotely the opposite of the climate change cabal, they are run out of town, belitted by their peers."
I'm sure you are absolutely correct. Good science is being run out of town left and right, and journals are refusing to print well researched opposition papers......
Have you ever considered that there isn't a grandiose conspiracy, and perhaps good data speaks for itself? Maybe that means that the good data has been on the current 'winning' side, and that contrary evidence has been sparse?
The above paper was published, and is being taken seriously.
Personally, I don't care "who's right". There are many reasons having nothing to do with climate to move away from fossil fuels (air quality, finite resource, foreign dependency etc..), we should get started as soon as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it was the National.Shooters.Association? ;)
On 1:
Maybe this is simplistic, but I envisioned something like a signature gathering phase. If a candidate or 3rd party gets enough signatures, instant public funding and full access to the public TV debates/ad spots.
On 2:
I could see a board of directors for the public news station being directly held accountable by obtaining their seats with an election. Of course, unless item 1 isn't addressed, electing them won't help. So it wouldn't be owned by the federal government. More like a public non-profit organization who's member's are allowed to vote.
The federal government's role would be the creation of law dictating how the process would work, and being involved in the tax collection and distribution.
"So what's the answer? I have no idea."
My idea has 3 parts:
1. Get the money out of politics: public funds for elections only, equal air time, no campaign contributions, severely limit what private organisations can buy in terms of air/radio time concerning elections and political issues.
2. Big increase in public news: national public radio needs more funds and a prime time news tv show that is not advertiser supported. We need news that isn't controlled by profit, nor by politically motivated groups.
3. Education: between the misinformation flowing from for profit news shows (left and right), and the generally poor state of public education, our citizens as a whole are pretty ignorant. I really don't know what can be done to improve education, but I think it should be given a higher priority.
He said "becoming more efficient", but besides that, of course fossil fuels and coal will have a tremendous cost advantage over newer 'green' tech: oil/coal already has its infrastructure built.
Pretend we have no electricity, and have to build everything from scratch. Factor in costs of going to war, pollution, pipelines, refineries, coal plants, gas pumps on every corner... that would be a far comparison to 'green' energy.
"Few would argue against having a governement option"
Unfortunately, Fox news and other conservative media outlets are 100% opposed to even having an option.
Usually arguments like, it will drive private insurers out of business. Yeah... just like the post office has put Fedex and UPS out of business.
Then there's the "against my principles" / anti-socialism / no free lunch argument. To which I normally respond, the uninsured already have a free lunch at any emergency room in the country. That care is extremely expensive, and drives the costs up for everyone. It would be much cheaper to just give the uninsured preventative care.
etc etc
"No, if the the model's unknown variables can change the outcome dramatically, then the model is faulty, and cannot be relied upon for accurate results."
The model isn't necessarily worthless just because the output has a wide range. It depends a lot on what the unknowns are, and whether they can eventually become known.
In addition, the model might be correct in describing a range of possible outcomes. You can then combine that with economic models that describe the consequences of throwing tons of money at the problem/regulating co2, etc.., versus doing nothing and the economic impact of that wide range of global warming predictions.
One of the problems I see with this whole debate, is that "it will destroy the economy" to deal with global warming, is rarely backed up with any economic models.
The climate scientists are doing their best to model things, where's the corresponding economic models?
They don't care if it is true or not. Business, as a whole, is in the game to make money, and not worry about the consequences.
Have you ever seen a business discover something horrible with its business practices, that was harming/maiming something/someone, and voluntarily stopped it, despite being in the legal right?
There's been a few corporations that have a 'green' image, and they try to maintain it, but the vast majority will continue to do something known to be harmful until they get caught. And even if caught, will continue to do it unless there are legal or financial consequences.
"Science does not go hand-in-hand with majority opinion - neither does science require consensus, nor does consensus imply any connection to reality."
While that is true, and we can see in the past that some theories that had overwhelming consensus were later proven wrong, if you had to bet today, would you bet against the consensus? We always have incomplete evidence, and politics will never go away. So how long do you wait for it be more clear?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ
So looking at extreme scenarios and admitting that a model has some unknowns is equal to "doctoring his data"?
The data didn't change. His tone and presentation of it might have.
A single non-profit health plan that provides free healthcare for everyone.
Basically, I think the same thing you said. I just wanted to clarify that emergency care is a large driving factor in the cost of healthcare.
Well, I do not think they are separate issues. The cost for all of us is very much related to emergency care.
I worked in a hospital for 5 years. Often I worked with systems that handled budgets, billing, etc..
When an uninsured person waits until they are sick enough for emergency care, the bill is huge, and unpaid. And the hospital must make up for that by charging more for all their services.
That drives up the cost of nearly ever aspect of healthcare. From the cost of an aspirin, to the cost of a physicians services.
Being more efficient and driving down costs is important, but only on the administrative side of things. The actual operations of most hospitals and clinics is super efficient. They have to be to make any profit or break even. I watched the hospital I work at cut employees time and time again, trim its belt, reduce services that weren't making money, etc.. etc.. They did this for 5 years, and finally went out of business.
Their moral mission (retaining some vital public services despite making no money on them, like dialysis), and state/gov regulations requring emergency care for all, was just too much to handle.
You should watch Food, inc. the documentary, or many of the other excellent movies that have described why we are so unhealthy.
There are a ton of factors, ranging from education, to farming and food preparation practices, changing the natural diets of livestock, etc..
Basically resulting in massive quantities of cheap, and very unhealthy fattening food. It is way more expensive to live on healthy good tasting food, if you are unable to spend a lot of time preparing/cooking from scratch.
Massive profit does lead to a lot of cutting edge research and top notch facilities.
From what I've read though, a lot of our cutting edge stuff only helps people with very rare diseases, like rare cancers, etc..
So we are probably better at treating 1% of medical problems, while the cost of the other 99% of medical problems costs more per person to treat than anywhere on earth.
"(although we end up paying for them anyway when they go to the emergency room: no one can be turned away without treatment, which is good), but shouldn't we try to solve the real problems that are in the system, instead of trying to rewrite the whole thing from scratch? There are relatively simple solutions to all these problems,"
Whats the simple solution to the emergency care issue to drive costs down? Curious what your take is on the matter.
"I don't mind subsidizing someone who is missing a leg or arm or is paralyzed. What I don't like is subsidizing people which have a problem with the area between their ears."
You don't seem to understand that despite not having free public health care, you are in fact subsidising people without health insurance.
You see, without health care, the poor, lazy, mentally ill, illegal aliens, etc.. all wait until they are extremely sick, and use an emergency room, often with long stays and huge bills. By law, hospitals must provide emergency care. They attempt to make up for this massive loss, by increasing the costs for those that can pay.
So all of us working folks pay way more for health care than a true free market system would otherwise dictate. We pay more per person for health care than any nation on earth, yet the WHO rated us 37th for effectiveness of that care and overall health.
So here's the two general choices for bringing the cost of health care down:
1. Remove the laws requiring free emergency care.
2. Give people that don't have health care, free insurance plans, so we are treating by prevention and general care, rather than paying for emergency care.
Now obviously health care is incredibly complex. But that is one of the primary factors driving up the cost.
Insurance companies in the "free market" now, have one job: maximize profit. They are for profit companies. That means denying as many claims as they can, while making insurance premiums/plans as costly as the market will allow.
Without a public option, there really is no competition to bring the costs down. And when you add morality into the equation, and have laws guaranteeing emergency care for anyone, you further push the cost up.
"No matter your political leanings, it is hard to argue that NASA does not provide a great return on investment. But with our myopic tendencies (Congress and Business) no one has the balls to invest what is needed to continue long-term success."
I don't disagree, but has anyone produced numbers on the return on that investment?
"However, looking at the amazing complexities of life, I still feel that given the long odds, the 'completely random permutation moderated by natural selection' isn't wholly sufficient to explain all life either."
Your post essentially boils down to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
You accept the known science, and find the weight of evidence for evolution and a old universe convincing, but attribute God to anything that science has not yet full explained.
As science marches on, you'll have less places to stick a gods hand in the processes. I've always felt that the proper way to view God is the answer to our purpose in life, the "why" of life, and not the "how".
Attaching a god to any part of the "how" it happened, means that as science discovers more, God has less room to exist in the evolving worldview.
"Even if this computer we make was capable of thinking at the level of 2x human, it will take many machines a long time before progressing to the next level of understanding of a complex non-linear phenomenon such as intelligence."
The major difference, is that we could copy/share every good 'result' of that machines 'thinking' to thousands of clones of that machine. It really would take off fast, assuming sufficient hardware to run any number of virtual brains and the ability for them to share data.
"But what if the brain works by exploiting all of the effects of molecules, proteins, ions, electrical charges, even quantum effects at a molecular level?"
A bird has all that going on, and a highly complex wing system with tiny muscles all firing at precise times, etc.. and yet we can fly using many different methods (propellers, helicopters, jets, etc..)
Many of the brain modeling efforts are on understand enough about the input/output to build a model that satisfies them. The scale if imaging is getting better and better, so input/output is being measured at increasing tiny levels. The model merely needs to measure in/out, and refine itself as new imaging techniques allow finer grained measurements.
It will eventually be possible to measure the response, motion, etc.. of the tiniest parts of the brain, down to atoms, in response to stimuli. At that point, modeling learning (watch the brain while someone learns, etc..), fear, image recognition, etc.. will lead to highly accurate models.
We might miss a quantum effect or two even then, but if what comes in and what comes out is pretty close, it might pass a turing test or two:)
The largest problem I've seen, is that the interviewer has either a firm grasp of interview techniques (to determine personality, quirks, responsibility, motivation, etc..) or they have the technical knowledge to evaluate the person's technical skill...but rarely does the interviewer have both those skill sets.
Companies often have multiple people interview one candidate, but what is often lacking in that process, is an effective way to combine the results from those multiple interviews into a complete picture.
A person is in many ways, more than the sum of their parts. Unexpected outcomes can be produced when all those parts are working as a whole. Interviewing seems to be about evaluate each part, but rarely the whole.
....to Australia?
Seriously though, what is going in the UK? Does the majority of the population actually want to live in a society like '1984' or 'V is for Vendetta'?
That aside, where is the social worker in all of this? If the kids are not being cared for, not sleeping well and/or missing school, they should be removed from that home.
"Term limits result in a legislature that doesn't know WTF it's doing at any time. "
How often is the turnover in AZ? Oregon and Washington had senators/congressmen that were basically lifers in DC.
If the people like you, you stay in. Term limits are in place to allow the people to vote out crappy legislators on a regular basis, and to hopefully provide a steady stream of new ideas.
Congressmen/Senators do not need to know how to write law. The need to know how to express the needs and views of their constituents, and then have their offices filled with highly qualified lawyers draft up legislation.
"BOTH sides"
You do realize that the only reason there are "sides" to this issue at all, are due to the media framing everything in a "debate"/"cross-fire" format right? And of course the natural political divide in Washington.
Scientists as a whole are not divided on the basics of the issue. There really are no "sides" to the issue. There is only the data. Explanations for the data are overwhelming in favor that the earth is warming and man is largely at fault.
However, that does not make it true. Probably true. But a new theory could come out tomorrow to explain that data, and if it does a better job, presto, new view.
Until then, stop pretending that there are "sides" to this issue.
Up higher in the thread someone linked to a study that says that 80% of the warming can be explained by some little el-nino oscillation cycle. 6 month per reviewed journal. New theory. Other scientists will evaluate it, and if it keeps explaining the incoming data more accurately, you'll see the scientific community begin to hold that as "gospel".
The oregon one:
"âoeHe is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist,â Kulongoski said. "
He's speaking as if he's speaking for the entire state, officially. The governor is just saying, "No, you don't". I work for a college in Oregon, as their single "job title x". 7,000 employees, and I have unique job title. If I started acting like I was speaking for the state on issues related to my job title... I'd probably get slapped down also.
Did his minority stance on global warming trigger the Governor to look into it? Most likely. But it doesn't change the fact that he should not be speaking for the state of oregon, which his title and papers imply.
Next one....Dyson.... a physicist.......
"Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred âoecarbon-eating trees,â"
Do you think it is perhaps because he is an aging PHYSICIST proposing "carbon eating trees" that he is being ridiculed a little bit? Come on.....
Serious work with serious data backing it up is not being rejected. People overstepping the bounds of their job titles, or people overstepping their knowledge base and providing no solid evidence or theories are the people being slapped down.
"If anyone, including noted scientists, say anything remotely the opposite of the climate change cabal, they are run out of town, belitted by their peers."
I'm sure you are absolutely correct. Good science is being run out of town left and right, and journals are refusing to print well researched opposition papers......
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:ypqfSnfiXoYJ:www.cnsnews.com/public/checker.aspx%3FrsrcID%3D51517+http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx%3FRsrcID%3D51517&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
Have you ever considered that there isn't a grandiose conspiracy, and perhaps good data speaks for itself? Maybe that means that the good data has been on the current 'winning' side, and that contrary evidence has been sparse?
The above paper was published, and is being taken seriously.
Personally, I don't care "who's right". There are many reasons having nothing to do with climate to move away from fossil fuels (air quality, finite resource, foreign dependency etc..), we should get started as soon as possible.