It's quite simple: the more catastrophic the scenario, the more cash your institution will get for further research work and the more expenses paid trips you'll get to the Maldives.
“EDF has long been a powerful voice in Washington, and when the need began to exceed the $1 million annual cap on our lobbying established by tax law, we created a sister group, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, which is free of spending limits. This has enabled us to ratchet up our legislative efforts, particularly on climate, and to advocate strong environmental laws even as the stakes increase.”
A BBC investigation in 2007 by reporter Simon Cox found that the European Commission is giving millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to environmental campaigners to run lobbying operations in Brussels. Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE), received almost half of its funding from the EU in 2007.
Greenpeace don’t mention the money that the EPA gives to NGO’s, for example National Resources Defense Council are currently in receipt of a grant of $1,150,123, (XA – 83379901-2) for promoting carbon trading.
The World Resources Institute (WRI) has received $3,879,014 from the EPA in the last nine years for propaganda projects and promotion of emissions trading schemes, $715,000 in the current period 2011/12. If the EPA really were interested in science, they would be funding the genuine research undertaken by people like Dr Soon, rather than policy promotion for their own agenda.
Members of the board of WRI, are Al Gore and Theodore Roosevelt IV. Mr Roosevelt is the chairman of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. and is the former chairman of the ill-fated Lehman Brothers’ Global Council on Climate Change and a board member of the Alliance for Climate Protection, whose chairman is Al Gore. The 2008 income for Gore’s “Alliance” was over $88 million.
The fact that a sceptic has received grants from Oil companies is somehow notable, but the fact that tax-payers are funding a propaganda operation by the environmental movement is not? Frankly, Greenpeace are complete hypocrites.
Well at the very least, you need a native developer to develop the software the web developer uses to developer his web software. I think.... but as a native developer, I'm not sure whether I'm making myself redundant in ten years time by not going all in training for web development.
This graph is instructive (note, Michael Mann had no part in its construction). What do you notice about temperature (left hand side is most recent)? Yes. It's not only highly variable (sampling error?) but that variability is not unprecedented. In fact current changes in temperature as measured over the last few hundred years are well within the bounds of natural variability.
What's more, it was apparently first found in the North Atlantic in 1999. A good 12 years ago. So what, apart from an appeal for funding (and consequently necessary media hype), has prompted this article, apart from the author's 2007 paper attempting to link its arrival to polar ice melting? As someone else has suggested, it's more likely to have arrived from ballast, as many other species have.
What do you mean "gradual change"? A whale is either there or it's not. It isn't half there. The same applies to the algae. Current "global warming" is well within the bounds of natural variation. So when you say "gradual", what you mean is "natural" or "normal". Well, can you state anything at all that is abnormal about these events?
In this case the rage is misplaced. It fails to take into account something we generally call implementation. Let's say I want to buy a Kinetic Armour Hardener. I go to the market and find the cheapest item. I right click the item and select "buy". I enter the number I want to buy and then get to choose between "buy with ISK" and "buy with credit card". If I do the latter, the database gives me the item from the market, credits the producer/seller with ISK and also credits CCP's bank account with real $. The only thing that didn't happen here is a deduction of ISK from the purchasers in-game bank balance.
So tell me what's the difference between doing that and my buying a PLEX, selling it on the market and then buying the item with the ISK? There is no difference whatsoever. The market hasn't been circumvented at all. Producers still profit from producing. The buyer still gets his item. CCP probably don't make a whole lot of extra $, because they're already making that from PLEX.
In conclusion I think this is just a huge fuss based on some erroneous assumptions about what CCP are actually going to do.
I don't agree with your 4 steps, so I have produced my own 9 step plan below:
Step 1: Recognise energy security as an issue of vital national interest
Step 2: Incentivise grant feeding egoists in academic ivory towers to produce the evidence required to help you promote your energy policies
Step 3: Vilify and denigrate anyone who does not agree with the paradigm, including equating them with creationists and holocaust deniers
Step 4: Construct idiotic renewable energy targets that cannot possibly be met without shutting down 90% of your entire economy and building 500,000 windmills
Step 5: Refer anyone who questions the paradigm to realclimate, an activist website run by Al Gore's Fenton Communications
Step 6: Completely ignore academic misconduct in support of your paradigm, including but not exclusively inappropriate use of statistical methods
Step 7: Retire before new research shows that atmospheric sensitivity to plant-food trace gas CO2 is barely perceptible, that sea levels aren't rising above trend, that Earth's thermostat is controlled by the complex interplay between ocean/sun/cosmic rays, clouds and water vapour
Step 8: ???
Step 9: National bankruptcy
What on Earth are you talking about? Are you suggesting that floods and fires are increasing in frequency? I think you'll find that they aren't. There are more people on the planet both reporting them and building houses on top of them, however. Secondly the increase in food prices is caused by issues other than climate. Wheat prices increased when the US turned over a large amount of its land to bio-fuel production, and that has been exacerbated by both commodity speculation and increasing demand from countries like China. It's absolutely *****-all to do with warming.
Well it's not a theory in the scientific sense; it's just a hypothesis (Svensmark et al). I'm sure it will be confirmed next year when the CLOUD experiment completes.
Nope, that's not my argument at all. There are many influences on climate, but I have no doubt that the Sun is a far bigger one than any of the others. It's just that as most of the scientists studying AGW have degrees in "environmental science", they don't really understand much about solar physics, and so prefer the trace gas paradigm as an explanation. It keeps the grant money flowing you see.
It's not really anything to do with free-will. It's more to do with the fact that I don't believe purely functional explanations of conscious experience, particularly the unitary aspect of it, can be adequately described with current theories. Quantum effects offer a route towards an understanding. Even with quantum effects there is still an explanatory gap; it's just that it is narrowed slightly.
I would be interested to know what constitutes a "neural assembly". I suspect than some form of coherence is involved. The question is whether or not this would be quantum coherence. This would be very difficult to establish of course, just as it was to establish quantum coherence in photosynthesis.
The cognitive dissonance I'm detecting from the AGW believers here is really very funny. I wonder, if the Sun can cause the Earth to cool, like it did in the 17th century, then it can also cause it to warm up, like it did in the 20th century. Precise mechanism is unknown, at present, of course.
On the other hand when it comes to knowledge the foundations you gain from college/university are useful. I know a guy at work who didn't do an under-grad degree. We're both developers. He didn't understand the concept of transitive closure (something we studied in CS), or how you could create a tree structure in a relational database.
Slashdot Mirror
It's quite simple: the more catastrophic the scenario, the more cash your institution will get for further research work and the more expenses paid trips you'll get to the Maldives.
The fact that a sceptic has received grants from Oil companies is somehow notable, but the fact that tax-payers are funding a propaganda operation by the environmental movement is not? Frankly, Greenpeace are complete hypocrites.
Well at the very least, you need a native developer to develop the software the web developer uses to developer his web software. I think.... but as a native developer, I'm not sure whether I'm making myself redundant in ten years time by not going all in training for web development.
This graph is instructive (note, Michael Mann had no part in its construction). What do you notice about temperature (left hand side is most recent)? Yes. It's not only highly variable (sampling error?) but that variability is not unprecedented. In fact current changes in temperature as measured over the last few hundred years are well within the bounds of natural variability.
What's more, it was apparently first found in the North Atlantic in 1999. A good 12 years ago. So what, apart from an appeal for funding (and consequently necessary media hype), has prompted this article, apart from the author's 2007 paper attempting to link its arrival to polar ice melting? As someone else has suggested, it's more likely to have arrived from ballast, as many other species have.
What do you mean "gradual change"? A whale is either there or it's not. It isn't half there. The same applies to the algae. Current "global warming" is well within the bounds of natural variation. So when you say "gradual", what you mean is "natural" or "normal". Well, can you state anything at all that is abnormal about these events?
Great points. This is just more hype from the Green movement. I expect an appeal for funding is due soon.
CCP create ISK out of nothing all the time. It happens whenever you mine an asteroid or farm an NPC. I don't see what the problem is.
In this case the rage is misplaced. It fails to take into account something we generally call implementation. Let's say I want to buy a Kinetic Armour Hardener. I go to the market and find the cheapest item. I right click the item and select "buy". I enter the number I want to buy and then get to choose between "buy with ISK" and "buy with credit card". If I do the latter, the database gives me the item from the market, credits the producer/seller with ISK and also credits CCP's bank account with real $. The only thing that didn't happen here is a deduction of ISK from the purchasers in-game bank balance.
So tell me what's the difference between doing that and my buying a PLEX, selling it on the market and then buying the item with the ISK? There is no difference whatsoever. The market hasn't been circumvented at all. Producers still profit from producing. The buyer still gets his item. CCP probably don't make a whole lot of extra $, because they're already making that from PLEX.
In conclusion I think this is just a huge fuss based on some erroneous assumptions about what CCP are actually going to do.
Then why are you spouting them?
I don't agree with your 4 steps, so I have produced my own 9 step plan below:
Step 1: Recognise energy security as an issue of vital national interest
Step 2: Incentivise grant feeding egoists in academic ivory towers to produce the evidence required to help you promote your energy policies
Step 3: Vilify and denigrate anyone who does not agree with the paradigm, including equating them with creationists and holocaust deniers
Step 4: Construct idiotic renewable energy targets that cannot possibly be met without shutting down 90% of your entire economy and building 500,000 windmills
Step 5: Refer anyone who questions the paradigm to realclimate, an activist website run by Al Gore's Fenton Communications
Step 6: Completely ignore academic misconduct in support of your paradigm, including but not exclusively inappropriate use of statistical methods
Step 7: Retire before new research shows that atmospheric sensitivity to plant-food trace gas CO2 is barely perceptible, that sea levels aren't rising above trend, that Earth's thermostat is controlled by the complex interplay between ocean/sun/cosmic rays, clouds and water vapour
Step 8: ???
Step 9: National bankruptcy
What on Earth are you talking about? Are you suggesting that floods and fires are increasing in frequency? I think you'll find that they aren't. There are more people on the planet both reporting them and building houses on top of them, however. Secondly the increase in food prices is caused by issues other than climate. Wheat prices increased when the US turned over a large amount of its land to bio-fuel production, and that has been exacerbated by both commodity speculation and increasing demand from countries like China. It's absolutely *****-all to do with warming.
Well it's not a theory in the scientific sense; it's just a hypothesis (Svensmark et al). I'm sure it will be confirmed next year when the CLOUD experiment completes.
Nope, that's not my argument at all. There are many influences on climate, but I have no doubt that the Sun is a far bigger one than any of the others. It's just that as most of the scientists studying AGW have degrees in "environmental science", they don't really understand much about solar physics, and so prefer the trace gas paradigm as an explanation. It keeps the grant money flowing you see.
It's not really anything to do with free-will. It's more to do with the fact that I don't believe purely functional explanations of conscious experience, particularly the unitary aspect of it, can be adequately described with current theories. Quantum effects offer a route towards an understanding. Even with quantum effects there is still an explanatory gap; it's just that it is narrowed slightly.
I would be interested to know what constitutes a "neural assembly". I suspect than some form of coherence is involved. The question is whether or not this would be quantum coherence. This would be very difficult to establish of course, just as it was to establish quantum coherence in photosynthesis.
The cognitive dissonance I'm detecting from the AGW believers here is really very funny. I wonder, if the Sun can cause the Earth to cool, like it did in the 17th century, then it can also cause it to warm up, like it did in the 20th century. Precise mechanism is unknown, at present, of course.
How are you any better off relying on a bunch of volunteer hackers to secure your language and framework, over one developed by a company like MS?
VB isn't a good example. It was a honking pile of shite that having experience with made some people believe they were software developers.
Yes, it's very definitely broken. Failed for me too.
On the other hand when it comes to knowledge the foundations you gain from college/university are useful. I know a guy at work who didn't do an under-grad degree. We're both developers. He didn't understand the concept of transitive closure (something we studied in CS), or how you could create a tree structure in a relational database.