The reason the main stream media is uneasy covering the protests is that their bosses are the 1%, they're all employed by megacorporations. If they're too nice to the protesters and they could find themselves joining the protesters during their suddenly abundant spare time. I'm pretty sure Rupert Murdoch has made it clear to his media empire that there shall be no positive coverage of the protests, much like he's done previously with climate change and other issues he doesn't like and wishes would go away.
Why would the two main parties want that? Not much can be done until they are replaced.
They will only do it, if they have no choice but to either do it or let the other party do it and reap the rewards. That requires a lot of angry people who think the system is broken...
The problem is that voting for a third party harms your own interests. It's the two-party, first past the post, trap. If you vote a third party, then candidate you prefer from the front runners is less likely to win.
The system is broken and needs to be replaced by something that can handle this problem, like preferential balloting or proportional representation. Third parties can only gain power by destroying the party they agree with and replacing it, but to do so they have to forfeit victory over multiple election cycles, allowing the party they don't agree with free rein.
As a side note, either system could reduce the gerrymandering problem where 90% of congress is virtually guaranteed to win their seats. That's because gerrymandering is enabled by the two-party trap. By limiting the choices that voters can make, it allows the gerrymandering process to accurately predict who groups of voters are going to vote for. Over 90% of American voters vote for the same party that they did last time, no small part of that consistency is because there are only 2 viable options and voting for the other side is tantamount to voting for "the enemy". Most other countries have more than two parties so switching parties is more common. Common enough that the gerrymandering process would have a significant chance to back fire.
I think the complicated truth is that the extreme right of the Republican party invented the Tea Party Express to hijack the Tea Party movement and has been using it to take out the moderate parts of the Republican party and enforce their orthodoxy on the rest of the party.
There's truth to the observation that in the modern Republican party, Reagan would be derided as a tax and spend socialist hippie.
Micheal Moore probably is "part of the 1%", his network is estimated to be about $50 million, however, I don't think Elizabeth Warren qualifies, it looks like her net worth might only be $3.5 million (Forbes lists it as 3.5 trillion which seems unlikely, as does 3.5 billion which would make her richer than Oprah who is (I think) the wealthiest woman in the world), which is less than half the top 1% cut off of around $9 million. Perhaps more relevantly, they seem to actually remember what it was to grow up in middle class America.
In comparison, Bloomberg is worth almost $20 billion. Micheal Moore and Elizabeth Warren's combined wealth would represent a rounding error in his wealth.
Similarly, I dual boot, the only time I boot Windows is to play some Windows only games and I don't do that very often. I spend more time playing games on the console than I do on Windows now. I've found that computer games have become much less compelling, and that many of the games I might want to play on the PC have console ports. The gamin companies I used to respect have mostly been bought and sold and are now soulless shells of their former selves.
I find GIMP is easier for me to use than Photoshop, but that may be because I never learned "the Photoshop way" of doing things. So really, nothing is keeping me on Windows, I just keep a copy around because it came with my computer and I may occasionally want to use it for something.
That would be the silly kind of formula everyone would have in mind instinctively. Is this real "scientist" bullshit, or just you explaining your (not proven) feelings?
I'm sorry, I thought you were asking for a statistical reason why setting high temperature records is correlated to a warming trend. Instead you wanted something like this. For the article about twice as many warm records were set in the 2000s as cold records.
It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st.
and then over-over-over simplify things and say:
We've already done more damage than we can reverse.
Of course, neither of those statements are things I wrote and they further more have no bearing on what I wrote. I was talking about the trend in record setting temperatures above. I'm sorry I overestimate how informed you are about the trend and your ability to look it up for yourself. I was unaware that you were ignorant and incompetent.
I could say "there was so much snow last winter in my country, your theory of global warming is stupid".
Snow fall may either decrease or increase because of global warming, it will commonly depend on whether or not you're on the leeward side of a sufficiently large body of water. Paradoxically a region could experience both more flooding and more droughts because of global warming because when the wind is dry the area with become drying, but when it's wet it will get wetter. A perfect example is Australia's drought that was broken by a record setting flood. The area is drying because it's normally a dry wind which carries more of the moisture out of the area, but when it finally gets wind in the right direction it gets a lot more water and the prolonged drought has left the land less able to handle the extra water.
This is pretty basic stuff, if you have a multi-variate function like w(t) = c(t) + y(t), where w(t) represents the temperature at time t, c represents the climate at time t and y(t) is a bounded random function that represents weather variability. If the value of c(t) is increasing over time and the range of y(t) remains constant you will consistently see more highs from w(t) than lows, because as c(t) increases new high values become reachable and some previous low values will no longer be reachable.
This is a gross simplification, but it explains why you should expect to see more warm events while the climate is warming. In other words, it's easily observable evidence that we should expect to see and it is something that we are seeing. If there were more cold records occurring it would evidence against global warming.
Most plants aren't carbon restricted. There's a hell of a lot of things that restrict plant growth, usually it's water, temperature and sunlight. Generally speaking, it's mostly plants in greenhouses (which get stable temperatures, lots of sunlight and abundant water) that are carbon limited.
It is clear that you are incredibly ignorant and shouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
I'd recommend you try to read this page, or at least look at the pretty graph. That has to do with temperature, but it is generally applicable to your beliefs about ocean levels.
The reason ocean levels have fallen is most likely because Thailand, Pakistan, Australia and a few other places have all experienced massive record-setting floods. There's actually been enough flooding to show up as a small dip in the measure of ocean levels.
It's simple, and obvious. He thinks China is Third World. It might be illuminating to consider what the original definition of Third World was. The U.S. and allies were the First World, the Soviets and allies were Second World, everyone else (which I think included China) was Third World. Of course, everyone else got caught in the cold war crossfire and most of the Third World nations ended up dirt poor which changed what people think Third World means.
That being said, never blame on malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Actually, the half that keeps their industry at full power at the cost of the ecosystem might find themselves facing internal issues. China is trying to clamp down on pollution because the new middle class likes to be able to see across the street during the day. Until the Olympics it was common for smog to be so bad in Chinese cities that you literally couldn't see the next building over, let alone to blue sky (it may eventually return to that level).
The communist part is seriously afraid that the growing environmental movements in China might topple the communist party. After all, they already ruined a significant amount (1/10th) of China's farm land. Additionally, they know the party is going to end soon, China's average wage is increasing at an unsustainable rate, something like 25% a year. With developed nations holding more or less steady, they are going to catch up to western wages before too long and the fall out is going to be bad enough without also having millions of people unemployed, sick and dying from pollution.
There's also a political issue there, every country that implements a carbon tax demonstrates that the fear mongers who call them "job killing taxes" are actually fear mongering. Eventually people may start asking why most of the countries that have this "job killing" tax actually have better employment and economic growth than the countries without it.
Which I seem to recall is what kicked off the problem - the developed world stopped pouring aerosols into the atmosphere but kept pouring the CO2.
Actually, that's not what kicked off the problem, it's what made the problem briefly more visible. Aerosols last only about 5 years in the atmosphere, where as the CO2 lasts between 100-1000 years. There was a brief period where aerosols in developed nations fell at a faster rate then they increased in developing nations. We saw a slightly higher rate of warming during that between period before China essentially single handedly outpaced the rest of world in aerosol emissions. The problem is those emissions are still accompanied by CO2. The CO2 constantly build up in the atmosphere, the aerosols only build for 5 years before they reach equilibrium (unless you keep increasing the amount you put into the air, which China is doing). Eventually, we're going to run out of coal and we're going to have 5 years where the rate of global warming will rise each year and then stick at the new, higher, aerosol free rate. The rough estimate is around 2050 unless things change.
Essentially the aerosols only temporarily hide the damage. Kind of like hanging a picture over the hole in the wall caused by the leaking pipe. The damage keeps growing even if you temporarily can't see it.
It's like seeing a truck coming at you from a distance, do you start calmly taking one step at a time towards the curb, or do you wait until the last minute and then dive into the gutter?
Or do you stand still and do nothing at all and get hit by the truck? Because every motion can be subdivided into smaller motions until each accomplishes virtually nothing. Since none of those actions will individually get you out of the way, why bother taking any of them?
You would do well to recognize that other people have different priorities from you, and that those values don't make them cowards just because they don't agree with you.
Those who would sacrifice the rule of law are worse than cowards.
We're done, there can be no reasonable dialogue as long as you continue to believe that anyone who disagrees with you is "worse than [a] coward".
What would be the consequences for the U.S. is Bush and Cheney were arrested for suspicion of ordering war crimes and torture?
Reinstatement of the rule of law. Undoubtedly a good thing.
Would you say the same thing if it plunged the U.S. into a civil war? Think for a moment what it would look like to scared conservatives if the new, black, "Muslim", president suddenly hauled the old president off to jail for the crime of "defending American". When you're playing armchair politics from Slashdot, you never have to consider the consequences of your policies.
Frankly, I think he probably should have done it anyway. I'm just pointing out that there are completely rational reasons to not do it. You believe the rule of law is of paramount importance, some people believe that the president's job is ensure peace and prosperity and that recklessly plunging the country into a political crisis not seen since the civil war would be reckless and foolhardy. You would do well to recognize that other people have different priorities from you, and that those values don't make them cowards just because they don't agree with you.
1) Averted a second American Great Depression (stimulus package) What, by giving bonuses to bankers who then didn't lend the money out?
That would be the Bush Bank bailout, which was not the stimulus package. The stimulus package is the one that prevented GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt. While some people may say that it would have been better had they actually gone bankrupt, preventing the bankruptcy most likely kept at least 1 million Americans employed and that was only part of the stimulus package.
While the quality of the legacy will depend on who's propaganda you believe, here are a list of things that should at least make the U.S. and/or the world a better place:
1) Averted a second American Great Depression (stimulus package) 2) Reformed Health Care to allow 30 million Americans access to it 3) Increased government transparency (we may not like the answers provided) 4) Created a federal CIO 5) Ended stop-loss 6) Wound down American troops in Iraq (aren't they supposed to be all gone by the end of the year?) 7) Ended don't ask/don't tell (Important because 140ish? translators fired under that program could have prevented or mitigated 9/11. The backlog in translations led to the orders to execute 9/11 being translated 2 days after the attacks) 8) CARD legislation to end predatory credit card practices 9) Committed to getting American troops out of Afghanistan 10) Ordered U.S. troops to prevent a Libyan genocide at that hands of Ghaddafi (who claimed he would make the streets run red with blood) without loosing a single American life 11) Ordered the capture/elimination of Osama bin Laden (successfully) 12) Eliminated the head of al'Qaida in Yemen
He's certainly not a do nothing president. You may not believe all of these achievements are good, but certainly there's something in that list that you should be able to approve of.
Of course, there would have been consequences to each of those actions:
Who does he start prosecuting for torture? Bush? Cheney? Powell? What would be the consequences for the U.S. is Bush and Cheney were arrested for suspicion of ordering war crimes and torture? What would Fox News claim was happening? What would the idiots who believe that Fox News is actually "Fair and Balanced" do? What if Obama loses in 2012 and the charges were dismissed and/or pardoned before the trial finished? Is there more important work that needs to be done than punishing Bush and Cheney?
Who does he prosecute at AIG or Goldman Sachs? For what crime exactly? Would the attempt to prosecute them instill confidence in the markets or cause them to panic?
I can't say for sure whether Obama has made the right or wrong calls on those issues, they are more complicated then they appear. I do think people would be much happier with Obama if he had found a couple of Wall street scapegoats who could be publicly dragged off in handcuffs, pilloried and sentenced to long prison terms. Of course, Bernie Madoff actually did have that happen to him, but he wasn't central enough to the actual problems to be a sufficient proxy for American rage.
I'm a little disappointed with what Obama hasn't done as well, however, he has accomplished quite a lot in his first term. Often we forget the good he's done when considering the good he hasn't done yet (and in some cases may never do). Obama's not perfect, and a wise man once wrote "perfect is the enemy of good". I suspect, unlike Bush, history will judge him more kindly than Americans do right now.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason the main stream media is uneasy covering the protests is that their bosses are the 1%, they're all employed by megacorporations. If they're too nice to the protesters and they could find themselves joining the protesters during their suddenly abundant spare time. I'm pretty sure Rupert Murdoch has made it clear to his media empire that there shall be no positive coverage of the protests, much like he's done previously with climate change and other issues he doesn't like and wishes would go away.
That's part of the libertarian agenda.
Why would the two main parties want that? Not much can be done until they are replaced.
They will only do it, if they have no choice but to either do it or let the other party do it and reap the rewards. That requires a lot of angry people who think the system is broken...
The problem is that voting for a third party harms your own interests. It's the two-party, first past the post, trap. If you vote a third party, then candidate you prefer from the front runners is less likely to win.
The system is broken and needs to be replaced by something that can handle this problem, like preferential balloting or proportional representation. Third parties can only gain power by destroying the party they agree with and replacing it, but to do so they have to forfeit victory over multiple election cycles, allowing the party they don't agree with free rein.
As a side note, either system could reduce the gerrymandering problem where 90% of congress is virtually guaranteed to win their seats. That's because gerrymandering is enabled by the two-party trap. By limiting the choices that voters can make, it allows the gerrymandering process to accurately predict who groups of voters are going to vote for. Over 90% of American voters vote for the same party that they did last time, no small part of that consistency is because there are only 2 viable options and voting for the other side is tantamount to voting for "the enemy". Most other countries have more than two parties so switching parties is more common. Common enough that the gerrymandering process would have a significant chance to back fire.
I think the complicated truth is that the extreme right of the Republican party invented the Tea Party Express to hijack the Tea Party movement and has been using it to take out the moderate parts of the Republican party and enforce their orthodoxy on the rest of the party.
There's truth to the observation that in the modern Republican party, Reagan would be derided as a tax and spend socialist hippie.
Micheal Moore probably is "part of the 1%", his network is estimated to be about $50 million, however, I don't think Elizabeth Warren qualifies, it looks like her net worth might only be $3.5 million (Forbes lists it as 3.5 trillion which seems unlikely, as does 3.5 billion which would make her richer than Oprah who is (I think) the wealthiest woman in the world), which is less than half the top 1% cut off of around $9 million. Perhaps more relevantly, they seem to actually remember what it was to grow up in middle class America.
In comparison, Bloomberg is worth almost $20 billion. Micheal Moore and Elizabeth Warren's combined wealth would represent a rounding error in his wealth.
How about NASA?
I didn't say idiot, I said ignorant, but it's not surprising that you don't know the difference.
Similarly, I dual boot, the only time I boot Windows is to play some Windows only games and I don't do that very often. I spend more time playing games on the console than I do on Windows now. I've found that computer games have become much less compelling, and that many of the games I might want to play on the PC have console ports. The gamin companies I used to respect have mostly been bought and sold and are now soulless shells of their former selves.
I find GIMP is easier for me to use than Photoshop, but that may be because I never learned "the Photoshop way" of doing things. So really, nothing is keeping me on Windows, I just keep a copy around because it came with my computer and I may occasionally want to use it for something.
That would be the silly kind of formula everyone would have in mind instinctively. Is this real "scientist" bullshit, or just you explaining your (not proven) feelings?
I'm sorry, I thought you were asking for a statistical reason why setting high temperature records is correlated to a warming trend. Instead you wanted something like this. For the article about twice as many warm records were set in the 2000s as cold records.
It was 71 degrees the other day on November 1st.
and then over-over-over simplify things and say:
We've already done more damage than we can reverse.
Of course, neither of those statements are things I wrote and they further more have no bearing on what I wrote. I was talking about the trend in record setting temperatures above. I'm sorry I overestimate how informed you are about the trend and your ability to look it up for yourself. I was unaware that you were ignorant and incompetent.
I could say "there was so much snow last winter in my country, your theory of global warming is stupid".
Snow fall may either decrease or increase because of global warming, it will commonly depend on whether or not you're on the leeward side of a sufficiently large body of water. Paradoxically a region could experience both more flooding and more droughts because of global warming because when the wind is dry the area with become drying, but when it's wet it will get wetter. A perfect example is Australia's drought that was broken by a record setting flood. The area is drying because it's normally a dry wind which carries more of the moisture out of the area, but when it finally gets wind in the right direction it gets a lot more water and the prolonged drought has left the land less able to handle the extra water.
This is pretty basic stuff, if you have a multi-variate function like w(t) = c(t) + y(t), where w(t) represents the temperature at time t, c represents the climate at time t and y(t) is a bounded random function that represents weather variability. If the value of c(t) is increasing over time and the range of y(t) remains constant you will consistently see more highs from w(t) than lows, because as c(t) increases new high values become reachable and some previous low values will no longer be reachable.
This is a gross simplification, but it explains why you should expect to see more warm events while the climate is warming. In other words, it's easily observable evidence that we should expect to see and it is something that we are seeing. If there were more cold records occurring it would evidence against global warming.
Most plants aren't carbon restricted. There's a hell of a lot of things that restrict plant growth, usually it's water, temperature and sunlight. Generally speaking, it's mostly plants in greenhouses (which get stable temperatures, lots of sunlight and abundant water) that are carbon limited.
It is clear that you are incredibly ignorant and shouldn't be posting on Slashdot.
I'd recommend you try to read this page, or at least look at the pretty graph. That has to do with temperature, but it is generally applicable to your beliefs about ocean levels.
The reason ocean levels have fallen is most likely because Thailand, Pakistan, Australia and a few other places have all experienced massive record-setting floods. There's actually been enough flooding to show up as a small dip in the measure of ocean levels.
So you're saying that Capitalism has nothing to do with capital?
Capital is money, and money is a proxy for resources.
It's simple, and obvious. He thinks China is Third World. It might be illuminating to consider what the original definition of Third World was. The U.S. and allies were the First World, the Soviets and allies were Second World, everyone else (which I think included China) was Third World. Of course, everyone else got caught in the cold war crossfire and most of the Third World nations ended up dirt poor which changed what people think Third World means.
That being said, never blame on malice what can be sufficiently explained by incompetence.
Actually, the half that keeps their industry at full power at the cost of the ecosystem might find themselves facing internal issues. China is trying to clamp down on pollution because the new middle class likes to be able to see across the street during the day. Until the Olympics it was common for smog to be so bad in Chinese cities that you literally couldn't see the next building over, let alone to blue sky (it may eventually return to that level).
The communist part is seriously afraid that the growing environmental movements in China might topple the communist party. After all, they already ruined a significant amount (1/10th) of China's farm land. Additionally, they know the party is going to end soon, China's average wage is increasing at an unsustainable rate, something like 25% a year. With developed nations holding more or less steady, they are going to catch up to western wages before too long and the fall out is going to be bad enough without also having millions of people unemployed, sick and dying from pollution.
There's also a political issue there, every country that implements a carbon tax demonstrates that the fear mongers who call them "job killing taxes" are actually fear mongering. Eventually people may start asking why most of the countries that have this "job killing" tax actually have better employment and economic growth than the countries without it.
That's why renewable energy sources are so important. It's not so bad if most (or all) of the energy is provided by the sun and the wind.
Which I seem to recall is what kicked off the problem - the developed world stopped pouring aerosols into the atmosphere but kept pouring the CO2.
Actually, that's not what kicked off the problem, it's what made the problem briefly more visible. Aerosols last only about 5 years in the atmosphere, where as the CO2 lasts between 100-1000 years. There was a brief period where aerosols in developed nations fell at a faster rate then they increased in developing nations. We saw a slightly higher rate of warming during that between period before China essentially single handedly outpaced the rest of world in aerosol emissions. The problem is those emissions are still accompanied by CO2. The CO2 constantly build up in the atmosphere, the aerosols only build for 5 years before they reach equilibrium (unless you keep increasing the amount you put into the air, which China is doing). Eventually, we're going to run out of coal and we're going to have 5 years where the rate of global warming will rise each year and then stick at the new, higher, aerosol free rate. The rough estimate is around 2050 unless things change.
Essentially the aerosols only temporarily hide the damage. Kind of like hanging a picture over the hole in the wall caused by the leaking pipe. The damage keeps growing even if you temporarily can't see it.
It's like seeing a truck coming at you from a distance, do you start calmly taking one step at a time towards the curb, or do you wait until the last minute and then dive into the gutter?
Or do you stand still and do nothing at all and get hit by the truck? Because every motion can be subdivided into smaller motions until each accomplishes virtually nothing. Since none of those actions will individually get you out of the way, why bother taking any of them?
You would do well to recognize that other people have different priorities from you, and that those values don't make them cowards just because they don't agree with you.
Those who would sacrifice the rule of law are worse than cowards.
We're done, there can be no reasonable dialogue as long as you continue to believe that anyone who disagrees with you is "worse than [a] coward".
What would be the consequences for the U.S. is Bush and Cheney were arrested for suspicion of ordering war crimes and torture?
Reinstatement of the rule of law. Undoubtedly a good thing.
Would you say the same thing if it plunged the U.S. into a civil war? Think for a moment what it would look like to scared conservatives if the new, black, "Muslim", president suddenly hauled the old president off to jail for the crime of "defending American". When you're playing armchair politics from Slashdot, you never have to consider the consequences of your policies.
Frankly, I think he probably should have done it anyway. I'm just pointing out that there are completely rational reasons to not do it. You believe the rule of law is of paramount importance, some people believe that the president's job is ensure peace and prosperity and that recklessly plunging the country into a political crisis not seen since the civil war would be reckless and foolhardy. You would do well to recognize that other people have different priorities from you, and that those values don't make them cowards just because they don't agree with you.
1) Averted a second American Great Depression (stimulus package)
What, by giving bonuses to bankers who then didn't lend the money out?
That would be the Bush Bank bailout, which was not the stimulus package. The stimulus package is the one that prevented GM and Chrysler from going bankrupt. While some people may say that it would have been better had they actually gone bankrupt, preventing the bankruptcy most likely kept at least 1 million Americans employed and that was only part of the stimulus package.
While the quality of the legacy will depend on who's propaganda you believe, here are a list of things that should at least make the U.S. and/or the world a better place:
1) Averted a second American Great Depression (stimulus package)
2) Reformed Health Care to allow 30 million Americans access to it
3) Increased government transparency (we may not like the answers provided)
4) Created a federal CIO
5) Ended stop-loss
6) Wound down American troops in Iraq (aren't they supposed to be all gone by the end of the year?)
7) Ended don't ask/don't tell (Important because 140ish? translators fired under that program could have prevented or mitigated 9/11. The backlog in translations led to the orders to execute 9/11 being translated 2 days after the attacks)
8) CARD legislation to end predatory credit card practices
9) Committed to getting American troops out of Afghanistan
10) Ordered U.S. troops to prevent a Libyan genocide at that hands of Ghaddafi (who claimed he would make the streets run red with blood) without loosing a single American life
11) Ordered the capture/elimination of Osama bin Laden (successfully)
12) Eliminated the head of al'Qaida in Yemen
He's certainly not a do nothing president. You may not believe all of these achievements are good, but certainly there's something in that list that you should be able to approve of.
Of course, there would have been consequences to each of those actions:
I can't say for sure whether Obama has made the right or wrong calls on those issues, they are more complicated then they appear. I do think people would be much happier with Obama if he had found a couple of Wall street scapegoats who could be publicly dragged off in handcuffs, pilloried and sentenced to long prison terms. Of course, Bernie Madoff actually did have that happen to him, but he wasn't central enough to the actual problems to be a sufficient proxy for American rage.
I'm a little disappointed with what Obama hasn't done as well, however, he has accomplished quite a lot in his first term. Often we forget the good he's done when considering the good he hasn't done yet (and in some cases may never do). Obama's not perfect, and a wise man once wrote "perfect is the enemy of good". I suspect, unlike Bush, history will judge him more kindly than Americans do right now.