The nature of the for-profit corporation is antithetical to anything "pretty far left" since the far left is opposed to capitalism.
The far left is opposed to "their capitalism" but is just fine with "our capitalism." In the same way that the far right is opposed to "their regulation" but is just fine with "our regulation."
If you want unregulated markets that's easy too. Illegal drugs. In fact any black market - counterfeits, prostitution, etc.
Black markets, are by their very definition, absolutely regulated market. Simply because market participants break the regulations doesn't mean that the regulations don't exist.
Oh, there are laws but that doesn't make them regulated markets.
That's exactly what that means. Especially in this case as the regulations are vigorously and violently enforced.
That sounds an awful lot like an unregulated market to me.
That's because you don't have a clue what any of those words mean.
And the same people who believe the free market should determine everything about our lives also believe those subsidies to oil companies are absolutely necessary.
That's the conservatives who pretend to like the free market. Libertarian organizations, such as Cato, are strongly opposed to these subsidies.
When someone claims to be a free market advocate, it's easy to test with something like this. Most of the time, they're liars.
I heard a great quote from an economist that is related here, "You wouldn't have to subsidize public transportation if you'd stop subsidizing private transportation [roads, mainly.]" It's not literally true, but it makes a good point.
So... I don't really think the conversation has been hijacked by extremists on both sides of the argument. That doesn't seem to match my experience at all.
You obviously don't hang out in the same places and with the same people I do. Or, more likely, your human nature filters what you hear though your own understanding.
It happened with smoking, and asbestos, and acid rain, and pretty much any time that a wealthy industry runs up against the consequences of irresponsible behavior.
You're begging the question. You imply that "wealthy industry" is only one side of the argument. There are trillions of dollars at stake in the carbon trading, nuclear, wind, and solar industries (just to name a handful.) There are plenty of vested interests to go around and motivate all kinds of stupidity.
Whatever it is, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to prevent warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius. After we reduce emissions some, we'll get more data in so we can fine tune our policies.
This where it gets sticky, or should I say, expensive. Some people like to pretend that we can do this without much cost, but it's just not true. Even if the Kyoto protocols were followed exactly by all countries the effect on the warming would be effectively 0% (something like 0.01%, to be more precise.) No single country even got close to reaching Kyoto cuts, it's just too expensive.
Looking at what is actually required to reduce emissions enough to stay below 2 degrees (which is a somewhat arbitrary number, predictions of calamity awaiting us there are debatable) it's obvious that we're more likely to achieve something by developing technologies to remove the carbon or to otherwise adapt to a warmer world (the people living in the year 2100 will have technologies that we can't even dream of now.) We can certainly do both, but by making carbon based energy more expensive we make this new research more expensive. Any proposals on the table to make sufficient reductions without starting a world war is just fanciful dreaming (India and China aren't going to be too happy with the West forcing them to shut down their thousands of coal plants.) They soothe some people's guilt, but they doesn't get things done.
This is exactly the effect doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide has. It causes the Earth to radiate less heat into space, so the Earth warms to a new equilibrium temperature.
Based on laboratory experiments we know how much heat the doubling of CO2 will absorb (it's the same for each doubling, since it's logarithmic.) Most atmospheric physicists agree that it's about 1.2 degrees for every doubling.
However, that's not what is being predicted. The IPCC, based on computer models, is predicting 4-6 degrees. That's supposedly coming from feedbacks in the atmosphere that amplify the warming. The only problem is that these feedbacks are theoretical and have not been empirically proven. There may well be more positive feedbacks than negative feedbacks but pointing to computer models as proof of their existence is bad science.
This all matters because the cost/benefit analysis is radically different if we're talking about 1.2 degrees or 4-6 degrees. The policy response, relative to mitigation and adaptation, is very different.
What does the age of a model have to do with anything?
It has to do with how much predictive data there is to validate. If climate can only be properly measured on a 20-30 year timescale, then a model which has fewer than 20 years of predictions can't be validated in any meaningful sense.
We have fairly detailed climate data going back well over 100 years to test them against.
This tells us nothing about their predictive capabilities. There are computer models which can accurately "predict" the last 100 years of the stock market, but that tells us nothing of their predictive power. Until a model has accurately predicted *FUTURE* climate then it hasn't been proven.
None of this is relevant your claim that climate is less chaotic than weather. Weather prediction has also gotten better, but chaos does appear to create a pretty hard ceiling.
So far they're doing a reasonably good job.
How can you know this? If climate requires periods of 20 or 30 years and the oldest models are less than 30 years with the vast majority of them younger than 20 years. How well a model is able to be adjusted to fit past data has nothing to do with its predictive capability.
I think the real problem is that extremists on both sides have taken control of the debate.
There are nutters who say that "the earth isn't really warming, or it doesn't matter if it does so I say let's do NOTHING!"
Conversely, there are other nutters who say "this is the most catastrophic thing ever so we need to spend any and all costs to do EVERYTHING!"
These people represent a teeny, tiny percent of people but they have somehow gotten most everyone in between these two extremes to believe that they're fighting against one extreme or the other.
The vast majority of people think that AGW is a problem of some magnitude and that something needs to be done. But because of the loudmouths on the ends, those who favour erring on the side of doing less are treated as though they want to do put their heads in the sand and do nothing and those who favour erring on the side of doing more are treated as though they want to have a blank cheque to shut down society.
That's what's obscuring the real science from the junk.
The reason that we can accurately predict when the pot of water will boil is not due to the simplicity of its model but due to the fact that we can run experiments on the boiling of water in a laboratory isolated from external, confounding factors. This can't be done with the climate, so we need to take a "bottom-up" approach instead of a "top-down" one. We need to predict when the water will boil by trying to understand the movements of water molecules in the presence of heat and simulate it with computer models. Not an easy task.
Climate models work by predicting the weather in short increments (20 or 30 minutes) thousands of times then averaging them together. Just like a modeller trying to predict when the first bubble will break the surface by individually predicting water molecule movement. But it's not even that simple. To make matters worse, there's a bunch of material in the water. Food, wood chips, pieces of plastic, salt, alcohol, sand, etc. Some of these materials magnify the heating while others retard it. There are also some complex feedbacks between the different materials that non-linerally affect the outcome. Not all of these mechanisms are well understood so the model makers have to generate a bunch of assumptions for how they interact within the stew.
Actually, it is. Do some study on how climate models work and you'll see that they are affected by the same non-linear, chaotic problems. Climate models work by predicting the weather in short increments, usually 20 or 30 minutes, over the course of decades. This is done hundreds or thousands of times and then averaged together to predict a trend. This may seem like a sound practice, the real problems is the trend that ends up being produced is nothing more than a summation of the model's biases. Since all models are, by definition, approximations of reality there will always be biases.
The predictions on Global warming are climactic predictions. They don't tell you what temperature Moscow will be at 3:00 pm tomorrow.
Actually, yes they do but it's buried in the data. Most people don't realise how climate models work. They work by predicting the weather in 20 minute increments over decades and seeing what the long term patterns are. They do this hundreds of times over and average out the results.
So, while a climate model isn't claiming to accurately predict the temperature in Moscow tomorrow, it does in fact predict it.
Not only can a company be shut down for competing with the USPS, the post office can fine you for using UPS and FedEx for mail they think isn't "URGENT" enough.
Slashdot Mirror
The nature of the for-profit corporation is antithetical to anything "pretty far left" since the far left is opposed to capitalism.
The far left is opposed to "their capitalism" but is just fine with "our capitalism." In the same way that the far right is opposed to "their regulation" but is just fine with "our regulation."
It may not be their job, but they do it by making it illegal to compete with the post office for first class mail.
If you want unregulated markets that's easy too. Illegal drugs. In fact any black market - counterfeits, prostitution, etc.
Black markets, are by their very definition, absolutely regulated market. Simply because market participants break the regulations doesn't mean that the regulations don't exist.
Oh, there are laws but that doesn't make them regulated markets.
That's exactly what that means. Especially in this case as the regulations are vigorously and violently enforced.
That sounds an awful lot like an unregulated market to me.
That's because you don't have a clue what any of those words mean.
There is now a second set of vaults cut into the same mountain of granite, that is used as a commercial offsite sensitive storage facility.
Perpetual Storage. I used to work for a software company that used them for offsite archiving.
Or, actually use the encrypted data as a one time pad and then when pressed use it to decrypt some ordinary data.
Hey, it's your choice. You could vote in favor of higher taxes (or disposal fees) to cover the cost of hiring trash sorters.
Since I *did* vote for that and didn't get it, how can you call it "my choice." Sounds like it's *your* choice, not mine. Democracy in action.
or d) not in the country you assume.
You're assuming that panhandlers work 7 days per week, 8 hours per day. Probably not a good assumption.
Reading comprehension fail.
And the same people who believe the free market should determine everything about our lives also believe those subsidies to oil companies are absolutely necessary.
That's the conservatives who pretend to like the free market. Libertarian organizations, such as Cato, are strongly opposed to these subsidies.
When someone claims to be a free market advocate, it's easy to test with something like this. Most of the time, they're liars.
I heard a great quote from an economist that is related here, "You wouldn't have to subsidize public transportation if you'd stop subsidizing private transportation [roads, mainly.]" It's not literally true, but it makes a good point.
So... I don't really think the conversation has been hijacked by extremists on both sides of the argument. That doesn't seem to match my experience at all.
You obviously don't hang out in the same places and with the same people I do. Or, more likely, your human nature filters what you hear though your own understanding.
It happened with smoking, and asbestos, and acid rain, and pretty much any time that a wealthy industry runs up against the consequences of irresponsible behavior.
You're begging the question. You imply that "wealthy industry" is only one side of the argument. There are trillions of dollars at stake in the carbon trading, nuclear, wind, and solar industries (just to name a handful.) There are plenty of vested interests to go around and motivate all kinds of stupidity.
Whatever it is, we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to prevent warming in excess of 2 degrees Celsius. After we reduce emissions some, we'll get more data in so we can fine tune our policies.
This where it gets sticky, or should I say, expensive. Some people like to pretend that we can do this without much cost, but it's just not true. Even if the Kyoto protocols were followed exactly by all countries the effect on the warming would be effectively 0% (something like 0.01%, to be more precise.) No single country even got close to reaching Kyoto cuts, it's just too expensive.
Looking at what is actually required to reduce emissions enough to stay below 2 degrees (which is a somewhat arbitrary number, predictions of calamity awaiting us there are debatable) it's obvious that we're more likely to achieve something by developing technologies to remove the carbon or to otherwise adapt to a warmer world (the people living in the year 2100 will have technologies that we can't even dream of now.) We can certainly do both, but by making carbon based energy more expensive we make this new research more expensive. Any proposals on the table to make sufficient reductions without starting a world war is just fanciful dreaming (India and China aren't going to be too happy with the West forcing them to shut down their thousands of coal plants.) They soothe some people's guilt, but they doesn't get things done.
This is exactly the effect doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide has. It causes the Earth to radiate less heat into space, so the Earth warms to a new equilibrium temperature.
Based on laboratory experiments we know how much heat the doubling of CO2 will absorb (it's the same for each doubling, since it's logarithmic.) Most atmospheric physicists agree that it's about 1.2 degrees for every doubling.
However, that's not what is being predicted. The IPCC, based on computer models, is predicting 4-6 degrees. That's supposedly coming from feedbacks in the atmosphere that amplify the warming. The only problem is that these feedbacks are theoretical and have not been empirically proven. There may well be more positive feedbacks than negative feedbacks but pointing to computer models as proof of their existence is bad science.
This all matters because the cost/benefit analysis is radically different if we're talking about 1.2 degrees or 4-6 degrees. The policy response, relative to mitigation and adaptation, is very different.
What does the age of a model have to do with anything?
It has to do with how much predictive data there is to validate. If climate can only be properly measured on a 20-30 year timescale, then a model which has fewer than 20 years of predictions can't be validated in any meaningful sense.
We have fairly detailed climate data going back well over 100 years to test them against.
This tells us nothing about their predictive capabilities. There are computer models which can accurately "predict" the last 100 years of the stock market, but that tells us nothing of their predictive power. Until a model has accurately predicted *FUTURE* climate then it hasn't been proven.
None of this is relevant your claim that climate is less chaotic than weather. Weather prediction has also gotten better, but chaos does appear to create a pretty hard ceiling.
So far they're doing a reasonably good job.
How can you know this? If climate requires periods of 20 or 30 years and the oldest models are less than 30 years with the vast majority of them younger than 20 years. How well a model is able to be adjusted to fit past data has nothing to do with its predictive capability.
Climate is saying that one in every six rolls of a die will be a five
The odds of that is ~66%, so that's not the best analogy.
I think the real problem is that extremists on both sides have taken control of the debate.
There are nutters who say that "the earth isn't really warming, or it doesn't matter if it does so I say let's do NOTHING!"
Conversely, there are other nutters who say "this is the most catastrophic thing ever so we need to spend any and all costs to do EVERYTHING!"
These people represent a teeny, tiny percent of people but they have somehow gotten most everyone in between these two extremes to believe that they're fighting against one extreme or the other.
The vast majority of people think that AGW is a problem of some magnitude and that something needs to be done. But because of the loudmouths on the ends, those who favour erring on the side of doing less are treated as though they want to do put their heads in the sand and do nothing and those who favour erring on the side of doing more are treated as though they want to have a blank cheque to shut down society.
That's what's obscuring the real science from the junk.
Good analogy, but improperly applied.
The reason that we can accurately predict when the pot of water will boil is not due to the simplicity of its model but due to the fact that we can run experiments on the boiling of water in a laboratory isolated from external, confounding factors. This can't be done with the climate, so we need to take a "bottom-up" approach instead of a "top-down" one. We need to predict when the water will boil by trying to understand the movements of water molecules in the presence of heat and simulate it with computer models. Not an easy task.
Climate models work by predicting the weather in short increments (20 or 30 minutes) thousands of times then averaging them together. Just like a modeller trying to predict when the first bubble will break the surface by individually predicting water molecule movement. But it's not even that simple. To make matters worse, there's a bunch of material in the water. Food, wood chips, pieces of plastic, salt, alcohol, sand, etc. Some of these materials magnify the heating while others retard it. There are also some complex feedbacks between the different materials that non-linerally affect the outcome. Not all of these mechanisms are well understood so the model makers have to generate a bunch of assumptions for how they interact within the stew.
Weather is chaotic, climate not so much.
Actually, it is. Do some study on how climate models work and you'll see that they are affected by the same non-linear, chaotic problems. Climate models work by predicting the weather in short increments, usually 20 or 30 minutes, over the course of decades. This is done hundreds or thousands of times and then averaged together to predict a trend. This may seem like a sound practice, the real problems is the trend that ends up being produced is nothing more than a summation of the model's biases. Since all models are, by definition, approximations of reality there will always be biases.
The predictions on Global warming are climactic predictions. They don't tell you what temperature Moscow will be at 3:00 pm tomorrow.
Actually, yes they do but it's buried in the data. Most people don't realise how climate models work. They work by predicting the weather in 20 minute increments over decades and seeing what the long term patterns are. They do this hundreds of times over and average out the results.
So, while a climate model isn't claiming to accurately predict the temperature in Moscow tomorrow, it does in fact predict it.
BRENNAV v US POSTAL SERVICE, 1978
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=439&invol=1345
Only if that piece of paper is urgent enough:
http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/express/techno/postal/express.html
http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg07200.html
Not only can a company be shut down for competing with the USPS, the post office can fine you for using UPS and FedEx for mail they think isn't "URGENT" enough.
http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/express/techno/postal/express.html
http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg07200.html
Who do you turn to when the bureaucracy is the powerful entity run amok?