ASCII porn was a thing in the early 70's at least, and probably earlier - I just wasn't in a situation where it was available until I got to secondary school.
However, GP was, humorously, alluding to the fact that data centers have not been around for decades, or, at least, that they have not been used for bitcoin mining.for decades.
It's very hard to grow your own food in Antarctica. It's going to be very hard to grow your own food anywhere in the middle of a nuclear winter.
Going the other direction, temperature-wise, run away warming would (eventually) raise the temperature at the poles to (considerably) above 40C, rendering them uninhabitable.
None of the predictions from your side have ever come true.
Well, there's now less than one year to go until you can determine the truth of a couple of predictions that I made 4 years ago.
An interesting question might be, if* the above predictions prove to be true how will that influence your opinions regarding AGW? What changes will you make to your life(style) in response?
*I'm rarely 100% sure on anything, but, given the current situation (4 years on), those predictions look like a fairly safe bet right now!
Basically, your plan is to turn plant matter into coal, and bury that
Essentially, yes...
while at the same time digging up other coal to burn.
...but I don't recall mentioning this part in my post.
Look, I'm not claiming this is the solution to global warming, I'm just suggesting that, if the energy balances work out, this is a method of mitigating some of our CO2 output, buying us additional time while we transition to a lower carbon intensity civilisation.
How about some solutions people? And cutting emissions is not going to fly, we need a different solution than just cutting emissions, we're past the cutting emissions is gunna amount to much of anything.
I have been thinking about this problem for a while now, and recently I had a 'ridiculous'* idea that might just work:
Because the majority of the world's landmass (just under 70%) is in the northern hemisphere atmospheric CO2 concentrations decrease significantly** during the spring and summer months there, as all the vegetation absorbs CO2 during leaf growth. During the autumn and winter, as leaves fall off and decompose due to microbial activity, CO2 concentrations rise again.
My simple suggestion is collect the leaves when they fall, and prevent them decomposing.
Of course, I do realise it's not 'quite' as simple as that, but, please, give me a minute to expand upon the idea...
[1] It is obviously not going to be possible to collect more than a small fraction of the leaf matter that falls. However, while fallen leaves do not contain a great deal of nutrients it would probably not be desirable, from an ecological perspective, to remove them all anyway, as this would have indeterminate effects, and knock on effects, on insect populations and so on. In addition, if my back of an envelope guesstimates are correct, we wouldn't need to collect them all anyway.
[2] I envisage both a top down, in providing essential infrastructure & materials, process, and a more community based ground up process, in collecting and pre-processing the leaves. In other words, governments, both local and national, would provide regional processing facilities, logistics, and long term storage, while local organisations, such as community groups and schools would inspire and 'organise' the collections, and provide the pre-processing facilites.
[3] Many years ago I saw a device being sold in this country which, with the addition of a small amount of water turned old newspapers into paper bricks, which could then be burned in / on your log fire or stove. When I refer to pre-processing above this is essentially what I mean. You turn a low density random shaped sack of brown leaves into a much higher density regular shaped brown brick of mostly carbon.
[4] These bricks are then transported to a local treatment facility to kill any microbes (similar to the radiation treatment we (used to) use on canned goods), then stored, or more likely, buried for a long long time.
Alas, I'm out of time, so this brief outline is all you're going to get here. I will just mention though, clearly a lot more thought and work needs to go into the idea - for example I'm not really sure how the radiation treatment works or, thus, how effective it would be. There are other issues too, I'm sure there'll be quite a few of you only too willing to point them out. Before you do, please, read the footnotes below...
*While this idea might, at first reaction, really seem ridiculous, completely infeasible, and impossible to organise effectively, I'd much rather replies included at least some 'constructive criticism' or ideas for improvements or avenues for further investigation or thought.
**At the moment global CO2 concentrations are rising at about 2 to 3 parts per million per year. The seasonal swing 'looks' to be about 5 to 6 parts per million, in other words twice the global increase, but, honestly, I'm not sure of the exact figures.
While I broadly agree with your position on this topic, allow me to expand upon a couple of points you've made, as well as disagree (in the loosest sense) with one of them.
Climate changes all the time as well.
Indeed. However, it's the current rate of change which is of immediate cause for concern. I have just thought of a suitable car analogy. Let's think of climate change (dc/dt) in a similar fashion to acceleration (dv/dt). If your moving car comes to a gentle halt dv/dt is small and negative, and you and your car remain undamaged. If, however dv/dt is large and negative, i.e you've hit something, at the very least your car is likely to suffer damage and, depending on safety features, you might too. The greater the magnitude of dv/dt the greater the damage. So it will be with dc/dt.
The fault lies in the binary assumption that climate can be changing either naturally OR because of human action, but NOT BOTH.
I do not know anyone, who actually has a genuine interest in the sciences, that subscribes to this false dichotomy. Clearly the Earth's axial tilt, its various gravitationally caused precessions, and the eccentricity of its orbit around the sun, while having significant effect on Earth's climate, are, for the moment anyway, firmly out of reach of mans' influence. What we do have 'control' over is the quantity of CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere, this being the most significant lever at our disposal to influence global climate.
What we're concerned with is whether or not the human contribution is pushing things to extremes and whether it's doing so so fast that neither humankind nor the planet can adapt to it.
Don't worry about the planet. It will adapt just fine. The semi-stable state of todays' climatic systems might switch into new semi-stable states for example the meridional overturning circulation (basically a superset of the gulf stream) might change its terminus or stop altogether, or increasing temperatures might further increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere causing additional, long lived, warming, or... well, lots of 'unhealthy' and severe changes could happen.
I'm pretty sure mankind will adapt too. Likewise society will adapt, after all, that's what a society does in response to stimuli. However, taking a worst case, tipping point, scenario that society and any civilisation we have will be far removed from those of today's world.
And even that isn't a boolean variable. If we can physically adapt but the economic consequences are ruinous, that's nearly as bad.
...and even if mankind had a major impact on CO2 levels (which it doesn't) and even if a rise in temperature was accurately measured and meaningful (which it isn't)...
Thanks, I needed a good laugh this morning!
The simple fact is mankind has had an unprecedented effect on levels of CO2. If you choose to argue against that point then anything else you say can be taken with a pinch of salt, because clearly you have a significant blind spot, for whatever reason, regarding the entire topic.
As for any rise in temperature, what I find fascinating in the whole debate is how focused people seem to be on the extremes, the overall highs and year round averages. Yup, these are significant, but to get hung up on them is actually to miss a great chunk of the picture. The fact* is, the climate has already changed markedly over my lifetime, slightly more so over the lifetime of my father, and ever so slightly more so over the lifetime of my grandfather. Furthermore, I strongly suspect the change over the lifetime of the next generation of my family will be even greater. Wait...
... Before you get all hot under the collar, let me explain what I mean by "the climate has already changed markedly", and how I know this to be a fact*. I don't mean there's been an increase in terrible storms (I'm not in a position to be a rational judge of whether that is the case or not), or that it's now hotter than it was when I was a child. No. Just simply that 'spring' arrives earlier than it did when I first started gardening, 30+ years ago. And both my father and grandfather also noted the same thing, though to a lesser degree. The thing is, this strange, almost time lapse view of the natural world is fairly easy to observe, and trivial to record. And the trend of earlier and earlier springs is obvious. I can't personally notice a 0.2 degree difference in temperature (figure pulled out of nowhere, by means of an example) between this March and March 2000. I don't need to, I can see the effects all around me in my garden. In one sense there are no more meaningful measurements than that!
Questioning isn't denying, no denying that. But denying isn't questioning, and it certainly isn't science.
*OK, I admit, while my observations are facts, the conclusions are in fact actually opinions. So sue me;-)
To strip away the humour, every bit of data that is considered essential should be in hard copy because all it will do is take one major solar storm to completely fuck up the current system for quite some time, in fact months to fix up and get running again. Those stupid enough to not prepare for this...
I think the preparation for that scenario is called a back-up, and 99.9% of large organisations, especially those dealing with your financials, have multiple modes of such.
In contrast, when talking about personally held paper statements and other important documents all it will take is one house sized fire to completely fuck up the system. As I think about it, if my house burned down I'm not entirely sure I'd even be able to remember which insurance company to contact about making a claim, and I'd certainly struggle to produce any policy documents at that stage, at least not without going online to download and print them.
Either way, the main reason institutions would like us to move towards paperless billing / statements is clearly overhead reduction, and the main reason some people object is inconvenience (personally I feel that that's more a perception of inconvenience - old habits and modes of thinking die hard - but I guess changing behaviour is actually an inconvenience, even if one that saves time / space / resources in the the long run).
Anyway, even considering the reported questionable behaviour of the companies involved, I'm not sure this would or should come as any surprise to anyone here. #notnewsatall
Oh, ha! Come to think of it? Your name reminds me of a movie with a guy named "Ratzo" in it. He's hanging out with a guy from Texas who's gone to New York to be a gigolo. The Texan's not very good at his job and they go to Florida and Ratzo dies. Oh yeah, spoiler alert. It's a kind of funny movie and I've not seen it in years. I've no idea what the name of it is.
In the 2006-2010 five year plan the real improvements in China's energy usage came from two programs.
Firstly, in the Thousand Enterprises Program the government forced China's top 1000 companies to completely rethink their energy use. They were told to monitor energy efficiency, and redesign, upgrade, and / or replace industrial equipment and software with the aim of becoming more energy efficient, reducing the amount of power they used without denting their productivity. The other program was even more drastic. Thousands of small, inefficient, factory units and assembly lines across the country were simply closed down.
The above programs were so successful (a roughly 19% cut in their energy intensity) that they were extended and expanded for the current five year plan: smaller, inefficient units are continuing to close down, and the Thousand Enterprises Program has become the Ten Thousand Enterprise Program. Current indications suggest that China has met its target of a further 16% cut in their energy intensity.
In addition, China has more installed wind power than any other country in the world, and has the second largest installed solar power capacity. I've also read that they (the Chinese government) are actively looking at new nuclear power plant designs as well as thorium salt reactor designs, which is a direct contrast to pretty much every single western government.
If all this qualifies as "not much" I'm not sure what it would take to impress...
I heard the same thing a few years ago and briefly got all hot under the collar about party balloons... then I realised that helium is being continuously replenished as a by-product of radioactive decay (alpha decay), plenty of which is going on within the earth's mantle and crust.
Now I can sleep soundly again, and dream of partial pressure shells / helium shell airships sailing majestically through our skies.
Will that remain true when your premium rises to £3,500/year without those things?
And why would your premium increase tenfold, simply because self driving cars become available?
My best guess as to your answer is "because insurance companies are greedy, and if they can (raise their premiums) they will". Unfortunately the insurance industry is actually pretty cut-throat. Margins are very slim, and premiums are based on expected costs, with those expectations compiled from mountains of data.
If self driving cars become common on the roads driving for everyone becomes safer, not just those people not driving their computer controlled vehicles. In that eventuality insurance premiums will drop for everyone, even those who insist on being 'in control' of their own vehicle. Sure, the premiums for self driving cars may be lower still, but it's a paranoid fallacy that premiums for everyone else will increase.
I admit I didn't bother to read this article on the subject, but my first thought on reading the summary was this:
Violent video game consumption was strongly correlated with declines in youth violence. However, it was concluded that such a correlation is most likely due to chance and does not indicate video games caused the decline in youth violence...
So what the article is saying is that when young (presumably mostly male) people started to spend large amounts of their time pretty much alone in their homes, participating in essentially solo activities, as opposed to hanging around with their 'gang' mates outside in public places, the amount of violence they committed against others decreased...
Well, colour me shocked!
Now, personally, I strongly suspect that violence in media, in any visceral form, be that that computer games or tv / film, does desensitise the viewer to similar events in the real world. However, not only is that a seperate issue, it could easily be argued that this is as much a good thing as the reverse.
Why are you replying to me? My post was not in response to one of yours.
Irrespective, if someone says 1+1=2 I'd say that depends, at the very least, on which base you're using, and once the phrase "it depends" enters the equation you're back to the fact it's subjective. Denial doesn't change that fact!
May be, but not in the tweeting cases prosecuted by the Crown. In each case, the mob sided with the target of the tweets, not the offender. And of course, we're not talking about online school bullying with this particular law. If this law was aimed at stopping school bullying, there would be a provision for underaged offenders, which there isn't. And it would be applied to those school cases, which as of now it hasn't.
Actually, we are talking about online school bullying, along with all the other forms of antisocial behaviour that the act encompasses:
"Revisions to the interim guidelines were issued on 20 June 2013... The revisions specified that prosecutors should consider:
whether messages were aggravated by references to race, religion or other minorities, and whether they breached existing rules to counter harassment or stalking; and the age and maturity of any wrongdoer should be taken into account and given great weight."
Whether or not the CPS has actually, sucessfully or otherwise, prosecuted a school kid yet doesn't mean that they can't or won't. That they haven't suggests that a certain sense of perspective remains, for now at least.
To be honest, while you can attempt to spin this as a blow against civil liberties and freedom, if anything it strikes me as mostly political posturing: A politician appearing to get tough on crime. And, like it or not, we theoretically live in a democracy. If the majority of the population of the UK think this law is a good thing (and I stongly suspect that there will only be a small minority of people that think that punishing people for the behaviours described within the law is a bad thing) then it's actually his job to suggest and implement such a policy change.
My memory of the sorts of problems they faced were... they made parts of the building out of concrete that they only later realized was either absorbing oxygen or putting out CO2.
As I understand it, the soil they started with had a fairly high organic matter content, compost basically, and this was broken down by microbial activity, absorbing oxygen, and releasing carbon dioxide. This CO2 was then, mostly, absorbed by the concrete in the structure's base, which was, at the time, an overlooked variable in the design of the enclosure, making the O2 reduction somewhat of a mystery. Like I said above, valuable information was gained from the 'experiment', even if what was learned was not what was originally intended as the object of study.
Part of my point here is, you wouldn't want to drag a bunch of people to the moon and then have that problem there. Let's get our shit together first.
Once more I tend to agree with you, but with reservations. We'll never reach a stage of certainty that nothing will go wrong. To paraphrase, it's difficult to make things foolproof, because fools are so ingenious. There will always be an element of risk in any venture of this kind. At some point however someone has to say "We think we've thought of almost everything, and we think we've over-engineered the system and structure for everything we haven't thought of. Let's do this!"
I just want to emphasise, I do think we're essentially in agreement. To put it 'poetically', if you're going to sail the seas for the first time, then it is the "Cs" that you need to focus on: Consideration, Caution & Care.
I think this is a problem that we need to confront first: Figuring out how to live in a sustainable closed system.
Were people ever successful in those bio-dome experiments? Are we now able to build an enclosed biosphere that can function sustainably, indefinitely, without bringing in materials or resources from the outside once you get started? There's not much point in trying to build something like that in space until we know how to build a sustainable closed system, reliably, without fail, here on Earth. Doing it in space will be more expensive, and failures will be less forgiving. It seems to me that we don't even know how to live sustainably within the biosphere we inherited, already running, the size of the Earth.
I guess you're asking, perhaps rhetorically, about the "Biosphere 2" project in Arizona. The short answer is no, not on either attempt, but some useful information was gained, which has spurred further, and rather more scientific, investigations.
The first group in there (1991-1993), although they lasted out the full two years of the experiment, experienced several 'rule-breaking' issues including: One member had to briefly leave the facility to be taken to hospital due to chopping off the top of one of her fingers in a threshing machine; Towards the end of the experiment oxygen levels within the facility had fallen so low that extra oxygen had to be pumped in, essentially in order to stop the participants' suffering severe side effects, possibly including death; Near-starvation was also an issue for the participants, though, I confess, I'm not sure if additional food was actually shipped into the facility.
There were a number of other issues that caused problems, but weren't strictly 'rule-breaking' in that they (probably) didn't break the closed system, such as: Fluctuating carbon dioxide levels; 'Plagues' of insect pests, notably red ants iirc; A schism within the group of participants, which ended in an almost complete breakdown in relations between the resultant two groups, to the extent that members of neither group would so much as talk to a member of the other group.
The second attempt lasted a mere seven months, with issues ranging from internal sabotage to external legal complications lending a certain 'colour' to the proceedings.
The facility is still in use, now under the auspices of the University of Arizona, and is being used for a variety of experiments, though much of it is no longer sealed from the outside. It does look like some actual science is being done there now, as opposed to what amounted to the public spectacle that occurred previously, so hopefully some useful insights will eventually come out of it. However, since some of the experiments currently running have an expected lifespan of 10+ years I'm not expecting immediate 'results'.
The key word here is "sustainability". Can we live in an enclosed system, indefinitely, without using up all of our resources or making it unlivable with our waste and pollution? It's the key to being able to conduct long-term space travel. It's the key to being able to build an off-planet colony. It's the key to continuing to live right here on this planet.
I do generally agree with you, but, I don't think we should get too hung up on the idea of an enclosed system, as that's not actually what we live in, and very unlikely to be what we end up creating. In the case of Earth, as a whole, we have an energy input, from the sun and we also have matter input, from in-falling dust. In the event that we do create a habitable environment off-planet then almost certainly we will continue to ship additional materials to that facility. The occupants of that facility will almost certainly gather and use materials (water, minerals, etc.) from outside their immediate sealed environment. And in the near(ish) future I can easily see us bringing in useful materials from space, such as rare metals from asteroids, water, even hydrogen from our
Consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice. What number am I going to roll?
Whatever your answer is, it's going to be wrong roughly 83% of the time, and your answer will differ from the actual roll by, on average, 1.9. The error factor in your answer amounts to nearly a third of the possible range of answers.
Now consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice 1000 times. What will the average of all those rolls be?
I strongly suspect that your answer is going to be roughly 3.5. And, strangely, the correct answer is likely to be very very close to 3.5. It's unlikely to be exactly 3.5 of course, but the error factor in the answer is going to amount to fractions of a percent.
Well, I'm not totally taken by my attempt at an analogy, though I think it has some potential. I'll have to think on it some more.
...Weather is a simpler, shorter-term analysis than climate, pretty much by definition.
I'm not sure I'm going to agree with this statement however. Is an apple a simpler fruit than an orange?
If you're going to go to all the effort to read the article, you might like to spend the extra 3 seconds to follow the linked reference (quoted in your post as [188]).
IID... today issued a midterm report on its cybersecurity predictions for 2014, revealing we are on our way to seeing many of these prognostications become a reality. Last year at this time, IID boldly envisioned that by the end of 2014:
We will witness the first ever public case of murder via hacked Internet-connected device.
The article goes on to say:
There has yet to be a proven case of murder via Internet. However, former Vice President Dick Cheney revealed in October 2013 that he underwent surgery to turn off the wireless function on his pacemaker, to prevent it from being hacked.
You end with:
TL;DR: Europol isn't predicting an online murder in 2014. That's just a subeditor who either didn't understand the plain English of the reporter or who chose to outright lie when writing the headline in order to sensationalise it.
A headline has to be short, and unfortunately in that shortening some information is lost. Sure, it would have been more accurate to say "Europol reports that a security firm predicts the first online murder by the end of this year", but removing the bolded part strikes me as an acceptable precis of (that small section of) the article. Complaining that editors sensationalise headlines in order to encourage people to read the full article is akin to complaining that advertisements are designed solely to get you to buy a product. Well, duh!
As for lying, you're as guilty as a lie by ommission as they are of any lie by commission.
Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?
Weather models are an absolute joke.
What?
Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?
Honestly, that would be an achievement in itself!
Or, maybe, they get it right most of the time, but it's only the times they're wrong that stand out?
However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.
Welcome to Western English for Speakers of Other Languages, I will be your affable tutor for this short session.
This promises to be good...
Lets begin:
Congratulations, you've turned your flying start of misunderstanding into a commanding lead of grammatical ignorance by committing the same type of apostrophic* error as the parent of the post you're replying to. And all that by the second line of your post. Just in case you're still confused as to what the hell I am referring to perhaps you'd care to note the usage of the other instances of your and you're in this paragraph.
p.s. this post assumes that English is not your first language. I made this assumption as it would not be proper to assume otherwise, as that would imply that you are a complete fucking moron with not even a basic grasp of the most basic English.
Classic!
*Yeah, I might well have made this word up, but, damn me, if it doesn't seem to sum up the situation rather nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
ASCII porn was a thing in the early 70's at least, and probably earlier - I just wasn't in a situation where it was available until I got to secondary school.
However, GP was, humorously, alluding to the fact that data centers have not been around for decades, or, at least, that they have not been used for bitcoin mining.for decades.
One word: Starvation.
It's very hard to grow your own food in Antarctica. It's going to be very hard to grow your own food anywhere in the middle of a nuclear winter.
Going the other direction, temperature-wise, run away warming would (eventually) raise the temperature at the poles to (considerably) above 40C, rendering them uninhabitable.
None of the predictions from your side have ever come true.
Well, there's now less than one year to go until you can determine the truth of a couple of predictions that I made 4 years ago.
An interesting question might be, if* the above predictions prove to be true how will that influence your opinions regarding AGW? What changes will you make to your life(style) in response?
*I'm rarely 100% sure on anything, but, given the current situation (4 years on), those predictions look like a fairly safe bet right now!
Basically, your plan is to turn plant matter into coal, and bury that
Essentially, yes...
while at the same time digging up other coal to burn.
...but I don't recall mentioning this part in my post.
Look, I'm not claiming this is the solution to global warming, I'm just suggesting that, if the energy balances work out, this is a method of mitigating some of our CO2 output, buying us additional time while we transition to a lower carbon intensity civilisation.
How about some solutions people? And cutting emissions is not going to fly, we need a different solution than just cutting emissions, we're past the cutting emissions is gunna amount to much of anything.
I have been thinking about this problem for a while now, and recently I had a 'ridiculous'* idea that might just work:
Because the majority of the world's landmass (just under 70%) is in the northern hemisphere atmospheric CO2 concentrations decrease significantly** during the spring and summer months there, as all the vegetation absorbs CO2 during leaf growth. During the autumn and winter, as leaves fall off and decompose due to microbial activity, CO2 concentrations rise again.
My simple suggestion is collect the leaves when they fall, and prevent them decomposing.
Of course, I do realise it's not 'quite' as simple as that, but, please, give me a minute to expand upon the idea...
[1] It is obviously not going to be possible to collect more than a small fraction of the leaf matter that falls. However, while fallen leaves do not contain a great deal of nutrients it would probably not be desirable, from an ecological perspective, to remove them all anyway, as this would have indeterminate effects, and knock on effects, on insect populations and so on. In addition, if my back of an envelope guesstimates are correct, we wouldn't need to collect them all anyway.
[2] I envisage both a top down, in providing essential infrastructure & materials, process, and a more community based ground up process, in collecting and pre-processing the leaves. In other words, governments, both local and national, would provide regional processing facilities, logistics, and long term storage, while local organisations, such as community groups and schools would inspire and 'organise' the collections, and provide the pre-processing facilites.
[3] Many years ago I saw a device being sold in this country which, with the addition of a small amount of water turned old newspapers into paper bricks, which could then be burned in / on your log fire or stove. When I refer to pre-processing above this is essentially what I mean. You turn a low density random shaped sack of brown leaves into a much higher density regular shaped brown brick of mostly carbon.
[4] These bricks are then transported to a local treatment facility to kill any microbes (similar to the radiation treatment we (used to) use on canned goods), then stored, or more likely, buried for a long long time.
Alas, I'm out of time, so this brief outline is all you're going to get here. I will just mention though, clearly a lot more thought and work needs to go into the idea - for example I'm not really sure how the radiation treatment works or, thus, how effective it would be. There are other issues too, I'm sure there'll be quite a few of you only too willing to point them out. Before you do, please, read the footnotes below...
*While this idea might, at first reaction, really seem ridiculous, completely infeasible, and impossible to organise effectively, I'd much rather replies included at least some 'constructive criticism' or ideas for improvements or avenues for further investigation or thought.
**At the moment global CO2 concentrations are rising at about 2 to 3 parts per million per year. The seasonal swing 'looks' to be about 5 to 6 parts per million, in other words twice the global increase, but, honestly, I'm not sure of the exact figures.
While I broadly agree with your position on this topic, allow me to expand upon a couple of points you've made, as well as disagree (in the loosest sense) with one of them.
Climate changes all the time as well.
Indeed. However, it's the current rate of change which is of immediate cause for concern. I have just thought of a suitable car analogy. Let's think of climate change (dc/dt) in a similar fashion to acceleration (dv/dt). If your moving car comes to a gentle halt dv/dt is small and negative, and you and your car remain undamaged. If, however dv/dt is large and negative, i.e you've hit something, at the very least your car is likely to suffer damage and, depending on safety features, you might too. The greater the magnitude of dv/dt the greater the damage. So it will be with dc/dt.
The fault lies in the binary assumption that climate can be changing either naturally OR because of human action, but NOT BOTH.
I do not know anyone, who actually has a genuine interest in the sciences, that subscribes to this false dichotomy. Clearly the Earth's axial tilt, its various gravitationally caused precessions, and the eccentricity of its orbit around the sun, while having significant effect on Earth's climate, are, for the moment anyway, firmly out of reach of mans' influence. What we do have 'control' over is the quantity of CO2 we're pumping into the atmosphere, this being the most significant lever at our disposal to influence global climate.
What we're concerned with is whether or not the human contribution is pushing things to extremes and whether it's doing so so fast that neither humankind nor the planet can adapt to it.
Don't worry about the planet. It will adapt just fine. The semi-stable state of todays' climatic systems might switch into new semi-stable states for example the meridional overturning circulation (basically a superset of the gulf stream) might change its terminus or stop altogether, or increasing temperatures might further increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere causing additional, long lived, warming, or ... well, lots of 'unhealthy' and severe changes could happen.
I'm pretty sure mankind will adapt too. Likewise society will adapt, after all, that's what a society does in response to stimuli. However, taking a worst case, tipping point, scenario that society and any civilisation we have will be far removed from those of today's world.
And even that isn't a boolean variable. If we can physically adapt but the economic consequences are ruinous, that's nearly as bad.
Indeed!
...and even if mankind had a major impact on CO2 levels (which it doesn't) and even if a rise in temperature was accurately measured and meaningful (which it isn't) ...
Thanks, I needed a good laugh this morning!
The simple fact is mankind has had an unprecedented effect on levels of CO2. If you choose to argue against that point then anything else you say can be taken with a pinch of salt, because clearly you have a significant blind spot, for whatever reason, regarding the entire topic.
As for any rise in temperature, what I find fascinating in the whole debate is how focused people seem to be on the extremes, the overall highs and year round averages. Yup, these are significant, but to get hung up on them is actually to miss a great chunk of the picture. The fact* is, the climate has already changed markedly over my lifetime, slightly more so over the lifetime of my father, and ever so slightly more so over the lifetime of my grandfather. Furthermore, I strongly suspect the change over the lifetime of the next generation of my family will be even greater. Wait...
... Before you get all hot under the collar, let me explain what I mean by "the climate has already changed markedly", and how I know this to be a fact*. I don't mean there's been an increase in terrible storms (I'm not in a position to be a rational judge of whether that is the case or not), or that it's now hotter than it was when I was a child. No. Just simply that 'spring' arrives earlier than it did when I first started gardening, 30+ years ago. And both my father and grandfather also noted the same thing, though to a lesser degree. The thing is, this strange, almost time lapse view of the natural world is fairly easy to observe, and trivial to record. And the trend of earlier and earlier springs is obvious. I can't personally notice a 0.2 degree difference in temperature (figure pulled out of nowhere, by means of an example) between this March and March 2000. I don't need to, I can see the effects all around me in my garden. In one sense there are no more meaningful measurements than that!
Questioning isn't denying, no denying that. But denying isn't questioning, and it certainly isn't science.
*OK, I admit, while my observations are facts, the conclusions are in fact actually opinions. So sue me ;-)
To strip away the humour, every bit of data that is considered essential should be in hard copy because all it will do is take one major solar storm to completely fuck up the current system for quite some time, in fact months to fix up and get running again. Those stupid enough to not prepare for this ...
I think the preparation for that scenario is called a back-up, and 99.9% of large organisations, especially those dealing with your financials, have multiple modes of such.
In contrast, when talking about personally held paper statements and other important documents all it will take is one house sized fire to completely fuck up the system. As I think about it, if my house burned down I'm not entirely sure I'd even be able to remember which insurance company to contact about making a claim, and I'd certainly struggle to produce any policy documents at that stage, at least not without going online to download and print them.
Either way, the main reason institutions would like us to move towards paperless billing / statements is clearly overhead reduction, and the main reason some people object is inconvenience (personally I feel that that's more a perception of inconvenience - old habits and modes of thinking die hard - but I guess changing behaviour is actually an inconvenience, even if one that saves time / space / resources in the the long run).
Anyway, even considering the reported questionable behaviour of the companies involved, I'm not sure this would or should come as any surprise to anyone here. #notnewsatall
Oh, ha! Come to think of it? Your name reminds me of a movie with a guy named "Ratzo" in it. He's hanging out with a guy from Texas who's gone to New York to be a gigolo. The Texan's not very good at his job and they go to Florida and Ratzo dies. Oh yeah, spoiler alert. It's a kind of funny movie and I've not seen it in years. I've no idea what the name of it is.
Midnight Cowboy.
Not much? Seriously?
In the 2006-2010 five year plan the real improvements in China's energy usage came from two programs.
Firstly, in the Thousand Enterprises Program the government forced China's top 1000 companies to completely rethink their energy use. They were told to monitor energy efficiency, and redesign, upgrade, and / or replace industrial equipment and software with the aim of becoming more energy efficient, reducing the amount of power they used without denting their productivity. The other program was even more drastic. Thousands of small, inefficient, factory units and assembly lines across the country were simply closed down.
The above programs were so successful (a roughly 19% cut in their energy intensity) that they were extended and expanded for the current five year plan: smaller, inefficient units are continuing to close down, and the Thousand Enterprises Program has become the Ten Thousand Enterprise Program. Current indications suggest that China has met its target of a further 16% cut in their energy intensity.
In addition, China has more installed wind power than any other country in the world, and has the second largest installed solar power capacity. I've also read that they (the Chinese government) are actively looking at new nuclear power plant designs as well as thorium salt reactor designs, which is a direct contrast to pretty much every single western government.
If all this qualifies as "not much" I'm not sure what it would take to impress...
I heard the same thing a few years ago and briefly got all hot under the collar about party balloons ... then I realised that helium is being continuously replenished as a by-product of radioactive decay (alpha decay), plenty of which is going on within the earth's mantle and crust.
Now I can sleep soundly again, and dream of partial pressure shells / helium shell airships sailing majestically through our skies.
Will that remain true when your premium rises to £3,500/year without those things?
And why would your premium increase tenfold, simply because self driving cars become available?
My best guess as to your answer is "because insurance companies are greedy, and if they can (raise their premiums) they will". Unfortunately the insurance industry is actually pretty cut-throat. Margins are very slim, and premiums are based on expected costs, with those expectations compiled from mountains of data.
If self driving cars become common on the roads driving for everyone becomes safer, not just those people not driving their computer controlled vehicles. In that eventuality insurance premiums will drop for everyone, even those who insist on being 'in control' of their own vehicle. Sure, the premiums for self driving cars may be lower still, but it's a paranoid fallacy that premiums for everyone else will increase.
I admit I didn't bother to read this article on the subject, but my first thought on reading the summary was this:
Violent video game consumption was strongly correlated with declines in youth violence. However, it was concluded that such a correlation is most likely due to chance and does not indicate video games caused the decline in youth violence...
So what the article is saying is that when young (presumably mostly male) people started to spend large amounts of their time pretty much alone in their homes, participating in essentially solo activities, as opposed to hanging around with their 'gang' mates outside in public places, the amount of violence they committed against others decreased...
Well, colour me shocked!
Now, personally, I strongly suspect that violence in media, in any visceral form, be that that computer games or tv / film, does desensitise the viewer to similar events in the real world. However, not only is that a seperate issue, it could easily be argued that this is as much a good thing as the reverse.
Indeed, if anything the remarkable thing about common sense is how remarkably uncommon it is.
Furthermore, since this is obvious from spending only a small amount of time with just about anyone you meet, this observation is common sense to me.
I disagree.
I misinterpreted nothing. No context was given.
However, you're quite correct that I was trying to make a point.
It's not clear to me what yours is, unless it's to get the record for the most posts under a single topic.
Why are you replying to me? My post was not in response to one of yours.
Irrespective, if someone says 1+1=2 I'd say that depends, at the very least, on which base you're using, and once the phrase "it depends" enters the equation you're back to the fact it's subjective. Denial doesn't change that fact!
Actually ... that's nonsense. 1 + 1 = 2. That's a fact. If someone says otherwise, they're wrong. Not everything is subjective ...
Actually, 1 +1 = 10.
Subjective enough for you?
May be, but not in the tweeting cases prosecuted by the Crown. In each case, the mob sided with the target of the tweets, not the offender. And of course, we're not talking about online school bullying with this particular law. If this law was aimed at stopping school bullying, there would be a provision for underaged offenders, which there isn't. And it would be applied to those school cases, which as of now it hasn't.
Actually, we are talking about online school bullying, along with all the other forms of antisocial behaviour that the act encompasses:
"Revisions to the interim guidelines were issued on 20 June 2013 ... The revisions specified that prosecutors should consider:
whether messages were aggravated by references to race, religion or other minorities, and whether they breached existing rules to counter harassment or stalking; and the age and maturity of any wrongdoer should be taken into account and given great weight."
Whether or not the CPS has actually, sucessfully or otherwise, prosecuted a school kid yet doesn't mean that they can't or won't. That they haven't suggests that a certain sense of perspective remains, for now at least.
To be honest, while you can attempt to spin this as a blow against civil liberties and freedom, if anything it strikes me as mostly political posturing: A politician appearing to get tough on crime. And, like it or not, we theoretically live in a democracy. If the majority of the population of the UK think this law is a good thing (and I stongly suspect that there will only be a small minority of people that think that punishing people for the behaviours described within the law is a bad thing) then it's actually his job to suggest and implement such a policy change.
vi is my shepherd. I shall not font.
It soothes my tired eyes
On screens of green; It speaks to me
In the quiet of the night
My code it doth record again
And me to type doth make
Within the paths of recursive loops
E’en for the program’s sake
Yea, though I work in a cubicle
Yet will I not use emacs
For vi is with me, and its colon
Efficiency it does not lack
My console it empowers me
In the presence of my foes
PHBs and HR drones
The source of all my woes
With Mountain Dew and salty snack :wq
I can code, and sigh
How happy can one programmer be
As long as he uses vi
My memory of the sorts of problems they faced were ... they made parts of the building out of concrete that they only later realized was either absorbing oxygen or putting out CO2.
As I understand it, the soil they started with had a fairly high organic matter content, compost basically, and this was broken down by microbial activity, absorbing oxygen, and releasing carbon dioxide. This CO2 was then, mostly, absorbed by the concrete in the structure's base, which was, at the time, an overlooked variable in the design of the enclosure, making the O2 reduction somewhat of a mystery. Like I said above, valuable information was gained from the 'experiment', even if what was learned was not what was originally intended as the object of study.
Part of my point here is, you wouldn't want to drag a bunch of people to the moon and then have that problem there. Let's get our shit together first.
Once more I tend to agree with you, but with reservations. We'll never reach a stage of certainty that nothing will go wrong. To paraphrase, it's difficult to make things foolproof, because fools are so ingenious. There will always be an element of risk in any venture of this kind. At some point however someone has to say "We think we've thought of almost everything, and we think we've over-engineered the system and structure for everything we haven't thought of. Let's do this!"
I just want to emphasise, I do think we're essentially in agreement. To put it 'poetically', if you're going to sail the seas for the first time, then it is the "Cs" that you need to focus on: Consideration, Caution & Care.
I think this is a problem that we need to confront first: Figuring out how to live in a sustainable closed system.
Were people ever successful in those bio-dome experiments? Are we now able to build an enclosed biosphere that can function sustainably, indefinitely, without bringing in materials or resources from the outside once you get started? There's not much point in trying to build something like that in space until we know how to build a sustainable closed system, reliably, without fail, here on Earth. Doing it in space will be more expensive, and failures will be less forgiving. It seems to me that we don't even know how to live sustainably within the biosphere we inherited, already running, the size of the Earth.
I guess you're asking, perhaps rhetorically, about the "Biosphere 2" project in Arizona. The short answer is no, not on either attempt, but some useful information was gained, which has spurred further, and rather more scientific, investigations.
The first group in there (1991-1993), although they lasted out the full two years of the experiment, experienced several 'rule-breaking' issues including: One member had to briefly leave the facility to be taken to hospital due to chopping off the top of one of her fingers in a threshing machine; Towards the end of the experiment oxygen levels within the facility had fallen so low that extra oxygen had to be pumped in, essentially in order to stop the participants' suffering severe side effects, possibly including death; Near-starvation was also an issue for the participants, though, I confess, I'm not sure if additional food was actually shipped into the facility.
There were a number of other issues that caused problems, but weren't strictly 'rule-breaking' in that they (probably) didn't break the closed system, such as: Fluctuating carbon dioxide levels; 'Plagues' of insect pests, notably red ants iirc; A schism within the group of participants, which ended in an almost complete breakdown in relations between the resultant two groups, to the extent that members of neither group would so much as talk to a member of the other group.
The second attempt lasted a mere seven months, with issues ranging from internal sabotage to external legal complications lending a certain 'colour' to the proceedings.
The facility is still in use, now under the auspices of the University of Arizona, and is being used for a variety of experiments, though much of it is no longer sealed from the outside. It does look like some actual science is being done there now, as opposed to what amounted to the public spectacle that occurred previously, so hopefully some useful insights will eventually come out of it. However, since some of the experiments currently running have an expected lifespan of 10+ years I'm not expecting immediate 'results'.
The key word here is "sustainability". Can we live in an enclosed system, indefinitely, without using up all of our resources or making it unlivable with our waste and pollution? It's the key to being able to conduct long-term space travel. It's the key to being able to build an off-planet colony. It's the key to continuing to live right here on this planet.
I do generally agree with you, but, I don't think we should get too hung up on the idea of an enclosed system, as that's not actually what we live in, and very unlikely to be what we end up creating. In the case of Earth, as a whole, we have an energy input, from the sun and we also have matter input, from in-falling dust.
In the event that we do create a habitable environment off-planet then almost certainly we will continue to ship additional materials to that facility. The occupants of that facility will almost certainly gather and use materials (water, minerals, etc.) from outside their immediate sealed environment. And in the near(ish) future I can easily see us bringing in useful materials from space, such as rare metals from asteroids, water, even hydrogen from our
Consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice. What number am I going to roll?
Whatever your answer is, it's going to be wrong roughly 83% of the time, and your answer will differ from the actual roll by, on average, 1.9. The error factor in your answer amounts to nearly a third of the possible range of answers.
Now consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice 1000 times. What will the average of all those rolls be?
I strongly suspect that your answer is going to be roughly 3.5. And, strangely, the correct answer is likely to be very very close to 3.5. It's unlikely to be exactly 3.5 of course, but the error factor in the answer is going to amount to fractions of a percent.
Well, I'm not totally taken by my attempt at an analogy, though I think it has some potential. I'll have to think on it some more.
...Weather is a simpler, shorter-term analysis than climate, pretty much by definition.
I'm not sure I'm going to agree with this statement however. Is an apple a simpler fruit than an orange?
Informative? Not so much...
If you're going to go to all the effort to read the article, you might like to spend the extra 3 seconds to follow the linked reference (quoted in your post as [188]).
IID ... today issued a midterm report on its cybersecurity predictions for 2014, revealing we are on our way to seeing many of these prognostications become a reality. Last year at this time, IID boldly envisioned that by the end of 2014:
We will witness the first ever public case of murder via hacked Internet-connected device.
The article goes on to say:
There has yet to be a proven case of murder via Internet. However, former Vice President Dick Cheney revealed in October 2013 that he underwent surgery to turn off the wireless function on his pacemaker, to prevent it from being hacked.
You end with:
TL;DR: Europol isn't predicting an online murder in 2014. That's just a subeditor who either didn't understand the plain English of the reporter or who chose to outright lie when writing the headline in order to sensationalise it.
A headline has to be short, and unfortunately in that shortening some information is lost. Sure, it would have been more accurate to say "Europol reports that a security firm predicts the first online murder by the end of this year", but removing the bolded part strikes me as an acceptable precis of (that small section of) the article. Complaining that editors sensationalise headlines in order to encourage people to read the full article is akin to complaining that advertisements are designed solely to get you to buy a product. Well, duh!
As for lying, you're as guilty as a lie by ommission as they are of any lie by commission.
Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?
Weather models are an absolute joke.
What?
Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?
Honestly, that would be an achievement in itself!
Or, maybe, they get it right most of the time, but it's only the times they're wrong that stand out?
However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.
Welcome to Western English for Speakers of Other Languages, I will be your affable tutor for this short session.
This promises to be good...
Lets begin:
Congratulations, you've turned your flying start of misunderstanding into a commanding lead of grammatical ignorance by committing the same type of apostrophic* error as the parent of the post you're replying to. And all that by the second line of your post. Just in case you're still confused as to what the hell I am referring to perhaps you'd care to note the usage of the other instances of your and you're in this paragraph.
p.s. this post assumes that English is not your first language. I made this assumption as it would not be proper to assume otherwise, as that would imply that you are a complete fucking moron with not even a basic grasp of the most basic English.
Classic!
*Yeah, I might well have made this word up, but, damn me, if it doesn't seem to sum up the situation rather nicely.