No one really disagrees with the basics of your first paragraph unless they like denying reality or have some kind of ax to grind. It's the dire predictions that require a move to a carbon credit based economy that are much less credible.
I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.
More ad hominem. Progress making your point, none. Progress making my point for me - that sincere skepticism is met with a religious-like zealotry - quite significant.
The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) most scientists aren't good programmers and 2) most scientists aren't good statisticians.
As a software developer who's worked in the field of RF simulation, I know how hard it can be to create a software model that accurately predicts reality. Even with such a relatively small set of inputs, it takes a great deal of effort to create models that are commercially useful. Fortunately, the RF environment was simple enough and we had enough control of the cell networks so we could create a model, use it to create a frequency plan, put the frequency plan in place, then compare our predictions to reality. Even then, we had many models that were useless to flat-out wrong. Our competitors tended to do even worse.
The CRU and the "Scientific consensus", on the other hand, have many more inputs, no ability to implement controlled changes to observe results, and no track record for showing that their models are accurate.
Maybe I'm corrupted because I know how difficult that simulation can be. I know that just because you can create a pretty map with interesting colors, doesn't mean that you can predict anything at all.
And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.
Gotta run, so can't reply to everything, but that's a bit of a Pascal's Wager. Like the fallacy of the wager, the fallacy of that is that there are infinite things that can do us in environmental disaster, war, asteroids, gray goo, skynet, etc. As a society, we don't have time to evaluate and consider them all. Climatologists really need to toe the line on following the very best Scientific methods so that those of us sincerely interested in doing the right thing won't be turned off or confused by waters muddied up by a bunch of politics.
This illustrates a bit of the disconnect between the people discussing this issue.
I don't think the sincere anti-AGW crowd completely denies temperature and CO2 trends. We all know there's a correlation, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that man has likely played a roll in its increase. The real question is where is it all going. Some of the predictions popularized by those like Al Gore are pretty dire. Just because CO2 causes warming doesn't mean those predictions are correct.
Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.
Like you say, I have trouble following all the intricacies of my own field. I won't put in the effort to become a climatologist any time soon. I have to rely on the judgement of people and sources that I trust. That trust is built upon my trust in those who dispassionately follow very clear Scientific methods and principles. Secrecy, vitriol, and a money trail doesn't give me warm fuzzies.
It's not the reality of temperature going up and the likelihood of man's involvement that I'm concerned about.
It's the catastrophic predictions based upon mystery models with hidden data that bothers me. If we're all headed for disaster, then I'll stop driving my car. You'd better be certain, though, and being an ass won't convince me that you're sincere.
You are to brutally honest, full of it.
Ad hominem has no place in this discussion.
I try to look past it, but there are plenty that you completely turn off with that line of attack.
The fact that the parent was labeled a troll only confirms the pattern I've witnessed, even in Scientifically-minded communities like/., of shouting down or censoring skeptics.
As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I'm very disappointed that asking for baseline data and manipulation algorithms has been met with stonewalling and name calling.
Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies. They should expect a high degree of skepticism and deal with it head on rather than politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up.
It saddens me that the AGW crew has forced supporters of the Scientific method like myself into an awkward position when discussing other cornerstone issues like evolution and cosmology. We've all been painted with the brush of religion because some Scientists forgot their place and their core principles in pursuit of Being Right(tm).
Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.
The fifth amendment wouldn't seem to be a license to lie. In order to take the fifth, people say, "I take the fifth". They don't just commit perjury.
I would think that you'd invoke the fifth amendment before even taking the scan or when agreeing to the questions that the prosecution is allowed to ask.
They're looking into the development tools allowed on one type of smart phone, and Comcast is allowed to get away with their shenanigans on a day-to-day basis? I watch my legitimate torrents die on the vine because Comcast doesn't like the content, then on the TV side, I have to rescan my DTV channels every month to figure out if CNN is on digital channel 86-112 or 25-8 or whatever... because Comcast doesn't want to publish their channel mappings since that would get less box rentals into homes and less pay per view orders.
As you can see from my sig, the money government spends is annoying. What they choose to spend it on is devastating.
Yeah, that Thor drive was some great vapor. My painful promise memory, was hologram storage. Back in 1992, I remember holding on to a hologram storage article from MacWeek that described what was supposed to be a consumer product in a year or so.
The media was the size of a credit card and they promised it would hold 100x as much as the current best hard drives of the day. It's a real shame because you just know that there was some fairly fraudulent monkey business going on to motivate guys like that to hawk something they had no chance of ever delivering, much less in the time frames they touted.
It's amazing how the same fraud is passed along by Slashdot every six months in the form of a new holographic storage device that's going to revolutionize everything. It's probably the same core of fraudsters forming new companies and recycling their same tired story to pull in new investment suckers.
What's depressing is the way that the press and/. alike eat up stories like this.
Sure, writing this density of nanodots is an impressive feat. But as you point out, it could be completely nonviable for creating an actual consumer product.
Why can't the Slashdot's front page be the kind of place where bullshit is called on researchers putting out this kind of nonsense. These guys should be shamed into putting out factual press releases. Whoring it up to get coverage from the general media while seeking increased funding should be smited.
Here's a cool project: Go back into the Slashdot archives and pull out all the articles that made five-years-out predictions. Keep the oldest ones where the claim has not been fulfilled but the claimant is still in business/tenured sorted at the top of a slashbox that we can all jeer at.
They don't have any of that information because they don't know any of it. They only have a way IN THE LAB to put a shitload of nanodots onto a medium. They mentioned that they have no packaging (way to read or even really write data into the dots) for an actual product.
It's like Ben Franklin saying, "Okay, I've discovered electricity. Computers should be along in about five years."
Okay, it's not that bad, but I hate that five year timeline that is rarely questioned but is thrown out to lure in investors and grant money.
Slashdot should have an automatic filter that looks for the five year estimate and flags with some "fat chance" special color.
Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.
Adobe would like to control the user experience through its proprietary application framework (Flash). Apple would like to control the user experience through locked down firmware and their App store.
Look, I have two iPhones. I love the iPhone. It is mostly what it is because Apple is in control and makes good design decisions. I have friends with Android phones and they're a bit of a mess IMHO. You can definitely see where the lack of a good strong single voice in the design has kept the current implementations from matching the iPhone experience.
That said, Jobs is being a hypocrite. He's playing a marketing game to give fan boys (ahem... you?) ammo in the Adobe battle for control over the Interwebs. Fair enough. I hope he wins it since I think that Flash sucks. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's being a hypocrite, though.
Don't let your admiration of Apple or its products cloud your ability to be objective about arguments put before you.
Um, you're the one who said "copyright trumps free speech". Trumping kinda sorta is infringing. Doncha think?
What I don't like is the chilling effect that use of copyright can have on political speech. If Obama want's to say "I'm lovin' it" or "It's a good thing", I don't want McDonalds or Martha Stewart going after him for it.
If a song creates a set of ideas in peoples' minds and someone wants to apply it to his political ideas as a sort of macro, then I really don't think that person should have to carefully weight out the sixty points (or whatever) of fair use to determine if a YouTube video with the thought can be put out there.
I see now where the legal precedent is, but I think that a more Bill of Rights friendly interpretation of the law should be used.
Okay, I looked into it and unfortunately you're mostly right. Emory has an interesting comment on a number of cases. http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/journals/elj/55/2/Rumfelt.pdf It can get murky, but all too often copyright law is used as the lens to evaluate a case rather than starting with the Constitution.
My knee-jerk reaction is to always defend speech and freedom. I'll have to think about this some more, but I still don't really like most of the legal precedent. I think it's dangerous to allow restriction of speech, even if it appears to infringe on your copyright.
Easily recognized themes are an important communication tool and part of our political discourse. What would happen if you couldn't quote certain works of poetry or other pieces of literature in your political speeches? The same should be true for musical works or even paintings if they express something that someone wants to put behind their message.
I still think that fighting someone for the words or music they use is hypocritical if you're concerned about the importance of freedom of speech and expression.
Free speech is about being able to get your message out against the government. To say that "copyright trumps free speech" is exactly wrong. Where copyright is counter to free political speech, copyright gives way.
Good liberalism supports totally free speech: freedom of speech, freedom of expression. For supposed "liberal" artists to get upset when their works are used as free speech is hypocritical.
If there's one thing that Americans left and right should have solidarity on it's the support of the Bill of Rights. Any politician of any political flavor who doesn't support FREEDOM for the citizens of our country should be fought tooth and nail. It's amazing how many people just don't seem to get that and try to pick and choose the freedoms that they like the exact way that they like them.
This thread is an amazing example of both an ignorance of the law and a whiny, penchant among some to rationalize breaking the law and doing something unethical.
I can just imagine all the touchy-feely parents out there, talking to their children about validating their god damned feelings all the time and expressing their emotions without ever talking about making ethical choices and obeying the rules of a society.
There are still people reading this thread who will walk away not really understanding the fact that "finder's keeper's" is stupid, wrong, and not a real law. People rationalize subjects like this as badly as they do religion, it seems.
If it's not yours then at worst you're supposed to leave it alone. If you get involved, it should be to find the rightful owner. Taking it out of the bar without reporting it to the police and seeking out a journalist to buy it from you is wrong.
This administration's fault, that administration's fault. It's YOUR fault for being a sucker and buying into the two party system as evidenced by even giving a shit about which party gets the blame.
Dumb voters giving their votes and shitloads of tax dollars to incompetent people is to blame for all of our corporate-run government's problems. Congratulations on being a typical sheep.
I don't have much inclination to go after one stupid religion more than the next... but as a neutral third party to religions in general, the Muslim one looks to be extraordinarily violent in its doctrines. The Bible is all over the map, sure. Plenty of places you can point to in order to justify violent behavior; but it's really difficult to use Christ's teachings to justify violence. The guy didn't really give haters much ammo. Christians can kill all over the world, but they have a hard time quoting Christ to do so. You rarely see Christian ministers advocating war. They may want war, but they know that the Christ thing was pretty decisively peaceful.
The Q'uran, on the other hand seems to be chock full of old-Testament style retribution against blasphemers. It seems to be the core of the Muslim doctrine, with very little of the Christian golden rule, forgiveness, loving your enemies themes. Muslim Imam's can preach Jihad left and right and be completely in tune with their religious doctrine.
Of course it's Christianity. It's the first major Christian church. Just because your sect of Christianity doesn't support their doctrines doesn't give you renaming rights.
Slashdot Mirror
No one really disagrees with the basics of your first paragraph unless they like denying reality or have some kind of ax to grind. It's the dire predictions that require a move to a carbon credit based economy that are much less credible.
I'll say this: you're not scientifically inclined at all. Otherwise, your arguments would probably have been with a slight scientifically orientation. There is none.
More ad hominem. Progress making your point, none. Progress making my point for me - that sincere skepticism is met with a religious-like zealotry - quite significant.
The only problems I've noticed with the CRU stuff are the same problems I see in every other scientific field: 1) most scientists aren't good programmers and 2) most scientists aren't good statisticians.
As a software developer who's worked in the field of RF simulation, I know how hard it can be to create a software model that accurately predicts reality. Even with such a relatively small set of inputs, it takes a great deal of effort to create models that are commercially useful. Fortunately, the RF environment was simple enough and we had enough control of the cell networks so we could create a model, use it to create a frequency plan, put the frequency plan in place, then compare our predictions to reality. Even then, we had many models that were useless to flat-out wrong. Our competitors tended to do even worse.
The CRU and the "Scientific consensus", on the other hand, have many more inputs, no ability to implement controlled changes to observe results, and no track record for showing that their models are accurate.
Maybe I'm corrupted because I know how difficult that simulation can be. I know that just because you can create a pretty map with interesting colors, doesn't mean that you can predict anything at all.
And with all due respect, considering the gravity of this matter, skeptics are a bit unwise to require this incontestable proof to be served on a silver plate in front of them. This kind of attitude that "if someone doesn't convince me, then it isn't true" is a bit dangerous.
Gotta run, so can't reply to everything, but that's a bit of a Pascal's Wager. Like the fallacy of the wager, the fallacy of that is that there are infinite things that can do us in environmental disaster, war, asteroids, gray goo, skynet, etc. As a society, we don't have time to evaluate and consider them all. Climatologists really need to toe the line on following the very best Scientific methods so that those of us sincerely interested in doing the right thing won't be turned off or confused by waters muddied up by a bunch of politics.
This illustrates a bit of the disconnect between the people discussing this issue.
I don't think the sincere anti-AGW crowd completely denies temperature and CO2 trends. We all know there's a correlation, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that man has likely played a roll in its increase. The real question is where is it all going. Some of the predictions popularized by those like Al Gore are pretty dire. Just because CO2 causes warming doesn't mean those predictions are correct.
Speaking only for myself, my skepticism stems from an apparent lack of transparency of the data, evidence of cherry picking data to meet an agenda, a lack of transparency of the algorithms used to massage the data, and the tell-tale vitriol spewed toward anyone who questions the above.
Like you say, I have trouble following all the intricacies of my own field. I won't put in the effort to become a climatologist any time soon. I have to rely on the judgement of people and sources that I trust. That trust is built upon my trust in those who dispassionately follow very clear Scientific methods and principles. Secrecy, vitriol, and a money trail doesn't give me warm fuzzies.
It's not the reality of temperature going up and the likelihood of man's involvement that I'm concerned about.
It's the catastrophic predictions based upon mystery models with hidden data that bothers me. If we're all headed for disaster, then I'll stop driving my car. You'd better be certain, though, and being an ass won't convince me that you're sincere.
You are to brutally honest, full of it.
Ad hominem has no place in this discussion.
I try to look past it, but there are plenty that you completely turn off with that line of attack.
I view it like proof of the supernatural. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Significant changes to the core of our lives in modern societies based upon models with hidden data and algorithms isn't sufficient.
The fact that the parent was labeled a troll only confirms the pattern I've witnessed, even in Scientifically-minded communities like /., of shouting down or censoring skeptics.
As an adamant supporter of the Scientific method, I'm very disappointed that asking for baseline data and manipulation algorithms has been met with stonewalling and name calling.
Proponents of AGW are asking for societies to completely revise their infrastructures and policies. They should expect a high degree of skepticism and deal with it head on rather than politicking, obfuscating, and downright covering things up.
It saddens me that the AGW crew has forced supporters of the Scientific method like myself into an awkward position when discussing other cornerstone issues like evolution and cosmology. We've all been painted with the brush of religion because some Scientists forgot their place and their core principles in pursuit of Being Right(tm).
Rather than continuing to escalate the rhetoric, climatologists need to return to their core data and analysis methods to present their cases in a fair and rational manner.
One of the many reasons that I always vote to decrease the power of government. Lower taxes + no deficit spending == less government power.
Good point. I see a high conviction rate for horny ADHD slashdotters on the horizon.
The fifth amendment wouldn't seem to be a license to lie. In order to take the fifth, people say, "I take the fifth". They don't just commit perjury.
I would think that you'd invoke the fifth amendment before even taking the scan or when agreeing to the questions that the prosecution is allowed to ask.
They're looking into the development tools allowed on one type of smart phone, and Comcast is allowed to get away with their shenanigans on a day-to-day basis? I watch my legitimate torrents die on the vine because Comcast doesn't like the content, then on the TV side, I have to rescan my DTV channels every month to figure out if CNN is on digital channel 86-112 or 25-8 or whatever... because Comcast doesn't want to publish their channel mappings since that would get less box rentals into homes and less pay per view orders.
As you can see from my sig, the money government spends is annoying. What they choose to spend it on is devastating.
Yeah, that Thor drive was some great vapor. My painful promise memory, was hologram storage. Back in 1992, I remember holding on to a hologram storage article from MacWeek that described what was supposed to be a consumer product in a year or so.
The media was the size of a credit card and they promised it would hold 100x as much as the current best hard drives of the day. It's a real shame because you just know that there was some fairly fraudulent monkey business going on to motivate guys like that to hawk something they had no chance of ever delivering, much less in the time frames they touted.
It's amazing how the same fraud is passed along by Slashdot every six months in the form of a new holographic storage device that's going to revolutionize everything. It's probably the same core of fraudsters forming new companies and recycling their same tired story to pull in new investment suckers.
What's depressing is the way that the press and /. alike eat up stories like this.
Sure, writing this density of nanodots is an impressive feat. But as you point out, it could be completely nonviable for creating an actual consumer product.
Why can't the Slashdot's front page be the kind of place where bullshit is called on researchers putting out this kind of nonsense. These guys should be shamed into putting out factual press releases. Whoring it up to get coverage from the general media while seeking increased funding should be smited.
Here's a cool project: Go back into the Slashdot archives and pull out all the articles that made five-years-out predictions. Keep the oldest ones where the claim has not been fulfilled but the claimant is still in business/tenured sorted at the top of a slashbox that we can all jeer at.
They don't have any of that information because they don't know any of it. They only have a way IN THE LAB to put a shitload of nanodots onto a medium. They mentioned that they have no packaging (way to read or even really write data into the dots) for an actual product.
It's like Ben Franklin saying, "Okay, I've discovered electricity. Computers should be along in about five years."
Okay, it's not that bad, but I hate that five year timeline that is rarely questioned but is thrown out to lure in investors and grant money.
Slashdot should have an automatic filter that looks for the five year estimate and flags with some "fat chance" special color.
I don't imagine we'd create anything highly adaptable, that's nature's thing.
Genetic tinkerers don't create anything in the "from scratch" sense. They copy complex and fully-formed genes from one life form to another.
It's like using a well-debugged library in a new application.
According to this hottie (see link)
Yes, that static-like sound you hear is the cacophony of Slashdotters furiously mashing mouse buttons all over the planet.
Hypocrisy is putting forth a set of philosophical arguments against Flash while performing the exact same business practices that he's decrying.
Adobe would like to control the user experience through its proprietary application framework (Flash). Apple would like to control the user experience through locked down firmware and their App store.
Look, I have two iPhones. I love the iPhone. It is mostly what it is because Apple is in control and makes good design decisions. I have friends with Android phones and they're a bit of a mess IMHO. You can definitely see where the lack of a good strong single voice in the design has kept the current implementations from matching the iPhone experience.
That said, Jobs is being a hypocrite. He's playing a marketing game to give fan boys (ahem... you?) ammo in the Adobe battle for control over the Interwebs. Fair enough. I hope he wins it since I think that Flash sucks. That doesn't mean that I don't think he's being a hypocrite, though.
Don't let your admiration of Apple or its products cloud your ability to be objective about arguments put before you.
Um, you're the one who said "copyright trumps free speech". Trumping kinda sorta is infringing. Doncha think?
What I don't like is the chilling effect that use of copyright can have on political speech. If Obama want's to say "I'm lovin' it" or "It's a good thing", I don't want McDonalds or Martha Stewart going after him for it.
If a song creates a set of ideas in peoples' minds and someone wants to apply it to his political ideas as a sort of macro, then I really don't think that person should have to carefully weight out the sixty points (or whatever) of fair use to determine if a YouTube video with the thought can be put out there.
I see now where the legal precedent is, but I think that a more Bill of Rights friendly interpretation of the law should be used.
Okay, I looked into it and unfortunately you're mostly right. Emory has an interesting comment on a number of cases. http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/journals/elj/55/2/Rumfelt.pdf It can get murky, but all too often copyright law is used as the lens to evaluate a case rather than starting with the Constitution.
My knee-jerk reaction is to always defend speech and freedom. I'll have to think about this some more, but I still don't really like most of the legal precedent. I think it's dangerous to allow restriction of speech, even if it appears to infringe on your copyright.
Easily recognized themes are an important communication tool and part of our political discourse. What would happen if you couldn't quote certain works of poetry or other pieces of literature in your political speeches? The same should be true for musical works or even paintings if they express something that someone wants to put behind their message.
I still think that fighting someone for the words or music they use is hypocritical if you're concerned about the importance of freedom of speech and expression.
Free speech is about being able to get your message out against the government. To say that "copyright trumps free speech" is exactly wrong. Where copyright is counter to free political speech, copyright gives way.
Good liberalism supports totally free speech: freedom of speech, freedom of expression. For supposed "liberal" artists to get upset when their works are used as free speech is hypocritical.
If there's one thing that Americans left and right should have solidarity on it's the support of the Bill of Rights. Any politician of any political flavor who doesn't support FREEDOM for the citizens of our country should be fought tooth and nail. It's amazing how many people just don't seem to get that and try to pick and choose the freedoms that they like the exact way that they like them.
This thread is an amazing example of both an ignorance of the law and a whiny, penchant among some to rationalize breaking the law and doing something unethical.
I can just imagine all the touchy-feely parents out there, talking to their children about validating their god damned feelings all the time and expressing their emotions without ever talking about making ethical choices and obeying the rules of a society.
There are still people reading this thread who will walk away not really understanding the fact that "finder's keeper's" is stupid, wrong, and not a real law. People rationalize subjects like this as badly as they do religion, it seems.
If it's not yours then at worst you're supposed to leave it alone. If you get involved, it should be to find the rightful owner. Taking it out of the bar without reporting it to the police and seeking out a journalist to buy it from you is wrong.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
This administration's fault, that administration's fault. It's YOUR fault for being a sucker and buying into the two party system as evidenced by even giving a shit about which party gets the blame.
Dumb voters giving their votes and shitloads of tax dollars to incompetent people is to blame for all of our corporate-run government's problems. Congratulations on being a typical sheep.
I don't have much inclination to go after one stupid religion more than the next... but as a neutral third party to religions in general, the Muslim one looks to be extraordinarily violent in its doctrines. The Bible is all over the map, sure. Plenty of places you can point to in order to justify violent behavior; but it's really difficult to use Christ's teachings to justify violence. The guy didn't really give haters much ammo. Christians can kill all over the world, but they have a hard time quoting Christ to do so. You rarely see Christian ministers advocating war. They may want war, but they know that the Christ thing was pretty decisively peaceful.
The Q'uran, on the other hand seems to be chock full of old-Testament style retribution against blasphemers. It seems to be the core of the Muslim doctrine, with very little of the Christian golden rule, forgiveness, loving your enemies themes. Muslim Imam's can preach Jihad left and right and be completely in tune with their religious doctrine.
Just saying...
Of course it's Christianity. It's the first major Christian church. Just because your sect of Christianity doesn't support their doctrines doesn't give you renaming rights.
Jackass troll.