The effects are *already* noticeable. Global average temperatures have risen further, and faster, in the past 150 years, than at any time in the past 20,000 years (at the very least) and probably half million years. --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>How people can determine that it's people causing >this? Were people around during the Ice Ages?
IN a word, by proxy measurements. A simple example is tree growth rings, which take us back a couple of thousand years or so. Then there are lake sediments, sea bed sediments, isotope ratios in rocks, dust and other materials trapped in ice cores...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
You're referring to the thermo-haline circulation in the north Atlantic, aka the Gulf Stream. Warm water heads north east from the Gulf of Mexico, gradually cooling as it does so. It dumps a load more heat into the western European climate which accounts for our unnaturally warm climate. (check the temperatures of other areas on the same latitude: Siberia, northern Canada... etc.) As the water cools, it becomes denser and saltier (due to evaporation). This culminates in some areas off Greenland ("gyres") where the cold dense water sinks and heads back south to restart the cycle. The whole cycle takes several centuries.
However several rather frightening changes have been seen in the temperature and saltiness (haline) of various important currents off the northern coast of Scandanavia . One apocalyptic scenario is indeed for the Gulf Stream to shutdown, which would ****up western Europe nicely.
However this is a *local* effect in the context of the global climate. The whole system is *extremely* complex (chaotic, even) and hard to model or predict. Broad, long-period predictions are easier to make than short term ones - we can model nice equilibrium states, but it's highly likely that in the short term (a few hundred years) that the entire planet will see wild fluctuations in precipitation, temperature, sea levels, yadda yadda.
Note to the inevitable sceptics: if you accept (say) evolution, Relativity, Quantum mechanics (random eexamples) as being very very very likely to be true, then at least read the damn docs, look at the scientists who are putting their reps on the line on this, and consider whether it's more likely that we *are* affecting the global climate in unpredictable ways, or that vested interests are funding astroturf movements to try to convince American voters that it's all a commie plot...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>I have no hope that there is going to be any action
> taken before half of the population is dying of skin cancer.
Pardon the flame, but... sheesh, what is it with Slashdotters that most of us know so much about computers, yet so little about anything else to do with general science? Global climate change has nothing whatever to do with skin cancer.
Eventually it'll be the market that forces the worst emitters of greenhouse gases to start taking serious action. Although the largest amplitude of changes will disproportionately affect poorer nations, the dollar cost of failing crops, extreme weather events and rising sealevels will be much, much greater in the US, Europe, and other industrialised coutries (any Ozzers awake yet ?;)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>While the Earth may be retaining more heat than >before, it is also well established that the >neutrino activity of the sun is considerably >less than we would expect.
>This suggests that the sun is getting colder. > The increase in global temperatures >may well be the Earth's way of combatting the > coming Ice age.
Piffle! Have you any evidence at all for that statement, or is it just wild unsubstantiated speculation?
Let me guess... --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>1) If you are willing to let the cops film you, >you are giving up your civil rights to walk
>around freely without someone monitoring you. >This is possibly the very definition of freedom.
>If you give that up, you don't have a lot left...
Well, I disagree with that. There IS no right not to be observed in public - that's what the word means, surely? This has nothing to do with 'freedom'.
>2) Police states DO have lower rates of crime. >Nobody disputes that. Saudi Arabia and Singapore
>monitor practically everything you do, and
>there's almost no crime. There's almost no
>innovation, art, or human expression of any kind
>either. If you want that kind of society, you're
>welcome to it.
Don't know what definition of 'police state' you're using, but in my book it means a place where the police make arbitary decisions about what's illegal, with no democratic oversight.; My girlfriend is from Belgrade, so I've got some (secondhand, granted) insight on that issue.
CCTV != police state. A police state is being beaten up and thrown in jail for 3 years without a fair trial for writing "Fuck Milosevic" on a wall.
3) Software is a global market. People don't realise it, but $$$ aren't the only thing that programmers, scientists and engineers look at.
[snip]
What's your point?
>4) You can't have the govt. surgically monitor
>the "bad guys" and let the "good guys" run around
> happily inventing things.
Granted the UK isn't the hotbed of innovation and scientific discovery it was 200 years ago;) but we seem to be doing OK, actually...
>5) Britain already has a really bad image -
Troll, -1!
>an inbred monarchy, a racist class driven >society, slow technology, foot-and-mouth-disease,
> and mad cow disease. Trust me, surveillance >cameras aren't going to make anyone want to go
>there.
Those cliches are as nonsensical as those of the average midwestern American tourist who thinks it's all cream teas, Shakespere, bowler hats and so forth. And I don't think CCTV is installed to be good PR.
I'm not taking the bait re: good/bad public images of *cough* various nations...
>6) If the cops monitor you, who monitors the
>cops? Abuse is inevitable.
We have this thing over here called the Home Office; which is accountable to the Home Secretary; who is elected. Yeah, that's right, the person responsible for law & order is directly elected constituency MP - in fact, they still have to do free, public access MP's surgeries. This is where an MP sits in an office at a publicly advertised time & place, once a month (at least) and allow Joe and Jane Public to stroll in and demand things of them. Tell me, how is the US equivalent elected? Oh wait, they're not, they're appointed by the President.
Don;'t get me wrong, our system is very far from perfect, abuse does happen, and *hey* sometimes the bastards get away with it... but that's politicians for you. Someone here has a sig "the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy"...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Drug -fest? I couldn't possibly comment. But *cough* summer in the Canning beer garden gets rather... untidy;)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
heh, saaf laa'n massive in the house I see... though us old timers still call the Hobgoblin "the Canning":)
Yeah it started getting trendy three or four years back when the Ritzy & Fridge Bar opened up... and then the Hope (which was admittedly shite) became a Babushka. Then the White Horse got a make over... now there's only a couple of places that do lock-ins / after hours drinking... --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>Or how about instead of mounting them on poles in
>the street they were carried by a policeman on foot
> and as you walked down the street there he was
>pointing it in your face.
Uh oh, must have had too much coffee this morning, fourth post on a single story... sorry:)
There was a big Reclaim the Streets demo a couple of years back (in Brixton, yeah) - totally peaceful, activists just blocked the main roads through the area and had a massive street party all day. Great fun it was too:)
At one point I spotted a copper carrying a flashy looking video camera, with a buddy riding shotgun. I shot off a couple of 35mm snapshots of him and got some filthy looks for my trouble:)... but there's no law against photographing them. Quid pro quo, innit. --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Heh. I just realised another CCTV impact on my daily life. I'm posting this from an office about 100 yards from the site of an
absolutely massive IRA bomb (similar scale to the Oklahoma City bomb) in 1991. Most of the surrounding buildings were demolished and rebuilt. They're all covered with plenty of cameras now... something I'm quite glad about. This area (heart of the City, London's financial district) is still a big prestige target.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Nope. There are a bunch of civilians working for the police sitting in front of 20 monitors; and the majority of footage is never watched, just stored for a few months in case it needs to be looked back over in future.
Having said that, I believe trials are in progress of face -recognition software. Course
(pardon the troll:) that could only happen here in the UK, right? You'd never get
that sort of thing in the freedom-loving USA...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Just remembered a recent and definite case where CCTV in the local areawas beneficial. We had a loony running around planting nailbombs in Brixton, then Brixk Lane (large asian population) and a gay pub in Old Compton St in Soho. Here's the nutter caught on CCTV in Brixton: unsurprisingly he was caught very soon after this picture was released.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
I live here. We're getting CCTV over the entire estate; the closest camera is about twenty yards from my front door. I'm actually quite pleased about this. A friend was recently killed in a hit-and-run road accident - it looks likely that the guilty party will get caught eventually, but with CCTV it'd be as simple as reading off the license plate and going to the perp's house to make arrests.
The other reason I'm in favour is that Brixton (in South London) has a bad (but deserved) reputation for aggro between the police and the local black population, going back beyond
the riots in 1981 (that's the London police's site, by the way - more realistic stuff here.) With CCTV, allegations of brutality can be more easily verified and rascist / thuggish cops thrown in jail, where they belong.
The only negative consequence I can think of is that it's going to increase the price of dope...:( --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Ananova links:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_220365.html
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_227556.html
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_228258.html
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
There is in fact a logo & standard for organic food, in the Uk at least; it's provided by the
Soil Association.
Whilst I'm here -- I too think this is an excellent idea. --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>People assume that you are safe if a site, which has its name registered first, is in operation.
Only if they're complete morons, or have been living in a cave for the past five years. Hello? WIPO? WTO? Ever read The Register ? --
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Slashdot Mirror
>I don't know why people make global warming a politcal issue.
Exactly. Where in RFC 2826 does it say anything about *which* specific organisation should run --
oh wait. Wrong forum ;)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
The effects are *already* noticeable. Global average temperatures have risen further, and faster, in the past 150 years, than at any time in the past 20,000 years (at the very least) and probably half million years.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
-
Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (PDF)
Seriously, it's good reading & reasonably short.--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>earth's temperature, and even weather (clouds,
>to be exact), is affected by Sunspots.
Correct. However, if you read the IPCC 3rd assesment report you'll see that this accounts for at most a few percent of recorded changes.
>What this all means is that our predictions about
> global warming due to the Greenhouse Effect may have been greatly exaggerated.
False.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>this? Were people around during the Ice Ages?
IN a word, by proxy measurements. A simple example is tree growth rings, which take us back a couple of thousand years or so. Then there are lake sediments, sea bed sediments, isotope ratios in rocks, dust and other materials trapped in ice cores...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
However several rather frightening changes have been seen in the temperature and saltiness (haline) of various important currents off the northern coast of Scandanavia . One apocalyptic scenario is indeed for the Gulf Stream to shutdown, which would ****up western Europe nicely.
However this is a *local* effect in the context of the global climate. The whole system is *extremely* complex (chaotic, even) and hard to model or predict. Broad, long-period predictions are easier to make than short term ones - we can model nice equilibrium states, but it's highly likely that in the short term (a few hundred years) that the entire planet will see wild fluctuations in precipitation, temperature, sea levels, yadda yadda.
Ob links:
Note to the inevitable sceptics: if you accept (say) evolution, Relativity, Quantum mechanics (random eexamples) as being very very very likely to be true, then at least read the damn docs, look at the scientists who are putting their reps on the line on this, and consider whether it's more likely that we *are* affecting the global climate in unpredictable ways, or that vested interests are funding astroturf movements to try to convince American voters that it's all a commie plot...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
> taken before half of the population is dying of skin cancer.
Pardon the flame, but... sheesh, what is it with Slashdotters that most of us know so much about computers, yet so little about anything else to do with general science? Global climate change has nothing whatever to do with skin cancer.
Eventually it'll be the market that forces the worst emitters of greenhouse gases to start taking serious action. Although the largest amplitude of changes will disproportionately affect poorer nations, the dollar cost of failing crops, extreme weather events and rising sealevels will be much, much greater in the US, Europe, and other industrialised coutries (any Ozzers awake yet ? ;)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>before, it is also well established that the
>neutrino activity of the sun is considerably
>less than we would expect.
>This suggests that the sun is getting colder.
> The increase in global temperatures
>may well be the Earth's way of combatting the
> coming Ice age.
Piffle! Have you any evidence at all for that statement, or is it just wild unsubstantiated speculation?
Let me guess...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>1) If you are willing to let the cops film you,
>you are giving up your civil rights to walk
>around freely without someone monitoring you.
>This is possibly the very definition of freedom.
>If you give that up, you don't have a lot left...
Well, I disagree with that. There IS no right not to be observed in public - that's what the word means, surely? This has nothing to do with 'freedom'.
>2) Police states DO have lower rates of crime.
>Nobody disputes that. Saudi Arabia and Singapore
>monitor practically everything you do, and
>there's almost no crime. There's almost no
>innovation, art, or human expression of any kind
>either. If you want that kind of society, you're
>welcome to it.
Don't know what definition of 'police state' you're using, but in my book it means a place where the police make arbitary decisions about what's illegal, with no democratic oversight.; My girlfriend is from Belgrade, so I've got some (secondhand, granted) insight on that issue. CCTV != police state. A police state is being beaten up and thrown in jail for 3 years without a fair trial for writing "Fuck Milosevic" on a wall.
3) Software is a global market. People don't realise it, but $$$ aren't the only thing that programmers, scientists and engineers look at.
[snip]
What's your point?
>4) You can't have the govt. surgically monitor
>the "bad guys" and let the "good guys" run around
> happily inventing things.
Granted the UK isn't the hotbed of innovation and scientific discovery it was 200 years ago ;) but we seem to be doing OK, actually...
>5) Britain already has a really bad image -
Troll, -1!
>an inbred monarchy, a racist class driven
>society, slow technology, foot-and-mouth-disease,
> and mad cow disease. Trust me, surveillance
>cameras aren't going to make anyone want to go
>there.
Those cliches are as nonsensical as those of the average midwestern American tourist who thinks it's all cream teas, Shakespere, bowler hats and so forth. And I don't think CCTV is installed to be good PR.
I'm not taking the bait re: good/bad public images of *cough* various nations...
>6) If the cops monitor you, who monitors the
>cops? Abuse is inevitable.
We have this thing over here called the Home Office; which is accountable to the Home Secretary; who is elected. Yeah, that's right, the person responsible for law & order is directly elected constituency MP - in fact, they still have to do free, public access MP's surgeries. This is where an MP sits in an office at a publicly advertised time & place, once a month (at least) and allow Joe and Jane Public to stroll in and demand things of them. Tell me, how is the US equivalent elected? Oh wait, they're not, they're appointed by the President.
Don;'t get me wrong, our system is very far from perfect, abuse does happen, and *hey* sometimes the bastards get away with it... but that's politicians for you. Someone here has a sig "the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy" ...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
You wouldn't be in the CU building by any chance? Where'd you do lunch - or post-work drinks?
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Drug -fest? I couldn't possibly comment. But *cough* summer in the Canning beer garden gets rather ... untidy ;)
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Yeah it started getting trendy three or four years back when the Ritzy & Fridge Bar opened up... and then the Hope (which was admittedly shite) became a Babushka. Then the White Horse got a make over... now there's only a couple of places that do lock-ins / after hours drinking...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
>Or how about instead of mounting them on poles in
>the street they were carried by a policeman on foot
> and as you walked down the street there he was
>pointing it in your face.
Uh oh, must have had too much coffee this morning, fourth post on a single story... sorry :)
There was a big Reclaim the Streets demo a couple of years back (in Brixton, yeah) - totally peaceful, activists just blocked the main roads through the area and had a massive street party all day. Great fun it was too :)
At one point I spotted a copper carrying a flashy looking video camera, with a buddy riding shotgun. I shot off a couple of 35mm snapshots of him and got some filthy looks for my trouble :) ... but there's no law against photographing them. Quid pro quo, innit.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Heh. I just realised another CCTV impact on my daily life. I'm posting this from an office about 100 yards from the site of an absolutely massive IRA bomb (similar scale to the Oklahoma City bomb) in 1991. Most of the surrounding buildings were demolished and rebuilt. They're all covered with plenty of cameras now... something I'm quite glad about. This area (heart of the City, London's financial district) is still a big prestige target.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Um, dope as in hash...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Having said that, I believe trials are in progress of face -recognition software. Course (pardon the troll :) that could only happen here in the UK, right? You'd never get
that sort of thing in the freedom-loving USA...
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Just remembered a recent and definite case where CCTV in the local areawas beneficial. We had a loony running around planting nailbombs in Brixton, then Brixk Lane (large asian population) and a gay pub in Old Compton St in Soho. Here's the nutter caught on CCTV in Brixton: unsurprisingly he was caught very soon after this picture was released.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
The other reason I'm in favour is that Brixton (in South London) has a bad (but deserved) reputation for aggro between the police and the local black population, going back beyond the riots in 1981 (that's the London police's site, by the way - more realistic stuff here.) With CCTV, allegations of brutality can be more easily verified and rascist / thuggish cops thrown in jail, where they belong.
The only negative consequence I can think of is that it's going to increase the price of dope... :(
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Ananova links:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_220365.html
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_227556.html
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_228258.html
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Your Ultra 60 isn't a general purpose PC.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
There is in fact a logo & standard for organic food, in the Uk at least; it's provided by the Soil Association. Whilst I'm here -- I too think this is an excellent idea.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Really? News to me. Examples? Or are you just recycling that old 'NSA_KEY' FUD?
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
Only if they're complete morons, or have been living in a cave for the past five years. Hello? WIPO? WTO? Ever read The Register ?
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
With the greatest of respect: *bullshit*
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles
These JPL / JH engineers are crazy.
--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles