Robots. Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, people are quick to claim such a raise in labor costs will just accelerate adoption of automation. But if we had basic income in lieu of a minimum wage, then such automation would be unequivocally positive.
In the original article Sam Altman states that even if only 10% of people bother to still do any work, it'd still be a net-win. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the robot revolution's not here yet. We need more than 10% of the workforce just to get food to everyone with current technology. It's not much of a stretch to observe that more than 10% of the workforce is gonna be needed to keep things from imploding.
In order for millions of people to eat, you need people making food.
All of the food consumed in the US (and most other industrialized countries) is produced by far less than 10% of the population.
You can't stop your counting at the folks working on the farms growing and raising the food. Even if everyone is supposed to drive themselves out to the farms to pick the raw produce and animals so they can process and butcher it themselves. At the least you've still got to have people working to build the car you drive out with and the tools you use to process it and the energy you power the car with.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the robotic revolution isn't here yet. The basics we rely upon for survival sit atop a mountain of manual labour currently performed by us meat bags.
In order for millions of people to wear clothing, you need people making clothes. In order for millions of people to have a roof over their heads, somebody has to build it.
So pay people to do those things. If someone is getting $10,000 as a Basic Income from the government, I bet you'll still be able to get them to work in manufacturing and construction if you pay them an additional $20,000.
The article is claiming this would all work if 90% of the population wouldn't take up your offer. With us requiring about 10% of the population to produce enough food right now. It's going to be lean times for everyone if that's the sole remaining workforce, even worse if heaven forbid some of them decide to take a rest too.
So who's gonna make the food, clothing, and shelter in this world? Even if we assume it's cool and we'll just raid the 50% of wealth held by the 1%, you can't eat, wear or live under cash and gold. In order for millions of people to eat, you need people making food. In order for millions of people to wear clothing, you need people making clothes. In order for millions of people to have a roof over their heads, somebody has to build it.
Simply put, if 90% of the population just stopped doing anything but consume what's in front of them we would hit mass starvation as we spent the last of the 1%'s remaining money to buy food abroad. After that would be a monstrous civil war as the hungry masses try and survive. Similar experiments have been tried in the past with bad result.
Good for you, quoting AR5 like a boss - the AR5 which says, in part: No correlation is found between biases in global mean surface temperature and equilibrium climate sensitivity, and so mean temperature biases do not obviously affect the modelled response to GHG forcing. There is very high confidence that the primary factor contributing to the spread in equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to be the cloud feedback. This applies to both the modern climate and the LGM. There is likewise very high confidence that, consistent with observations, models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations....
When using the models to hindcast past temperatures, unknowns like clouds drive the energy imbalance into "an unrealistic state". The energy imbalance is the driver of climate change and the models still have to make hand tuned corrections to keep hindcasts realistic.
Oh whoops. You misunderstood.
I can see your mistake. You are conflating cloud forcing with water vapour forcing. Unlike water vapour that traps energy, clouds reflect it both away from the planet and back down onto it. The overall global impact is tricky because it depends on location, time of day, cloud composition, altitude and other factors. These factors aren't modelled well yet because they can hinge on actions happening at much smaller sizes than current modelled grids. Go back and read the IPCC Box 9.1 again and you'll see I'm very accurately quoting it. Global TOA energy imbalance, that drives climate change, will go to unrealistic states in current models unless hand tuning for unknown and poorly known factors are accounted for. Almost without exception, clouds are the largest tuning factor adjusted in the models included in AR5.
There IS however a lot we still don't understand properly, enough that the impact of those unknowns drive the models HARDER than the CO2 we've been dumping.
No: AR5 says: biases in cloud simulation lead to regional errors on cloud radiative effect of several tens of watts per square meter...
Did you not read it?
Yeah, I've read that, but unlike yourself I also understood it. The global energy imbalance is less than 1 Watt per square meter, that small difference has driven the 1C of rise over the last century. CO2's total trapping of energy as of 2014 is just shy of 2 watts per square meter(NOAA). Several tens of Watts per square meter as fluctuation, even regionally, kinda makes a big impact in that context, no? Thus, it corroborates and reflects well with current modellers emphasis and correcting for unknowns in cloud forcing by tuning for it.
Now in all likelyhood the unknowns aren't pushing temperature one way or another, but that's an assumption at this stage(and a reasonable one).
No, AR5 says that the feedback from clouds has been both modeled and observed as positive - did you not read the paper you cited?
Let me point you back again to your section you referenced, you are substituting clouds in for water vapour, you can't do that: models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations.
Well, if number 3 is true, it's probably time to consider killing yourself.
That scenario suggests firstly that some undetectable phenomena is driving climate change, and also that some undetectable phenomena is preventing the warming that should have occurred from rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, there is a century long conspiracy plot...
Let's stop there and be a little more honest. The GP was more honestly asking what are the unknowns. How much of current warming do we attribute to human activity and how much to natural fluctuations. Are best metric for that are the models, and here's the state of the art from the IPCC's fifth assessment. From Box 9.1: maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
When using the models to hindcast past temperatures, unknowns like clouds drive the energy imbalance into "an unrealistic state". The energy imbalance is the driver of climate change and the models still have to make hand tuned corrections to keep hindcasts realistic.
There's not some undetectable or magical force acting to confound all our current understanding of CO2 impact on recent warming. There IS however a lot we still don't understand properly, enough that the impact of those unknowns drive the models HARDER than the CO2 we've been dumping. Now in all likelyhood the unknowns aren't pushing temperature one way or another, but that's an assumption at this stage(and a reasonable one). However, when tryign to map out the next 100 years and our impact on it, we might want to hold a large caveat on the possibility that the unknowns we are working at are a major factor and most certainly impact our confidence in any projections.
The thing is - everything you say is true - and none of it matters one bit.
This is about the perceptions people have...
Well if you are only caring about public opinion and popularity then I have no disagreement. Standing back and ignoring the world from an isolationist position is the most popular thing any government can do, both domestically and abroad. Bill Clinton still hasn't really taken any flak about Rwanda because he made the smart move and ignored the genocide there during his presidency. Also, as you observe, had he acted to try and prevent the murder of 800,000 Rwandans and even successfully stopped the violence at a mere 50k dead, the headlines would all read about how American invasion of Rwanda killed thousands.
Here's the thing though. Most countries have signed the global declaration on genocide. That includes an agreement to act to prevent a genocide, like in Rwanda and Libya. It also includes that failing that, to act to punish those responsible for genocide, like Saddam and Omar Al-Bashir. Whether it's popular or not, I take the stand that it's the right thing to do.
Just try turning it around... would you be happy if the Russian Military showed up un-asked and started bombing Washington and New York next year to protect you from Trump's evil ?
First off, I'd be watching from the outside as I'm a Canadian, not an American. My government enjoys a lot more popularity globally because we generally don't help/intervene and instead provide the wonderfully useless role of giving talks on the importance of peace that both sides should embrace.
More importantly, your analogy is beyond flawed. You need to describe what makes Trump like Saddam. On his first day of office does he round up congress, accuse half of them as traitors and force the other half to execute the traitors in the parking lot? That was Saddam's first day. Does he outlaw any criticism of himself and his policies. Does he convert the jails to include rape rooms for the wives and daughters of dissidents? Does he enact the genocide of hundreds of thousands on multiple occasions. Does he consolidate his power so ruthlessly and completely that Americans lose all hope of ever being free of him through their own power? If you paint the picture that deep then you've got an analogy. You'll not it's a little different from tolerating 4 years of clown passing a pile of bad policy before failing to be re-elected.
>Plenty of freedom fighters around the world and throughout history refrain from inciting terror among civilians.
There's probably nobody in the world who strikes more terror into the hearts of civilians than the US Military. There's a reason Noam Chomsky keeps pointing out that the unwritten part of the FBI's definition of "terrorism" must be "unless it's us doing it".
The Iraqi Kurds cheering at the site of American forces and jets since the first Gulf war being a notable exception.
The Iraq civilian death toll is well over a hundred thousand.
Saddam executed a deliberate genocide of Iraqi Kurds long before that, with an estimated 150-350 thousand killed. And those were not collateral casualties due to the use of human shields or suicide bombings by the Kurdish resistance. Those were civilians loaded unto buses to be shot in the desert and burried by bulldozer. Saddam committed a second genocide at the end of the first Gulf War as Bush listened to chaps like yourself and stopped short of marching in Iraq. American forces were ordered to stand down and watch as Saddam's gunships led the charge that would kill another estimated 100+ thousand civilians.
Apologies, I know that context messes with your agenda.
Nobody even knows exactly how many people have been killed by drones in Pakistan but we do know that a lot of them were civilians - often civilians who just happened to park next to a target that may or may not be a legitimate target (we can't really tell if they are because we don't get to know who they are).
I'll tell you what people do know about the number of people killed in Pakistan. The TTP(Pakistani Taliban) kill 100 plus Pakistanis for every life lost in drone strikes. The number of Al Qaida and Taliban leaders killed by drone strikes is also too long to include here, but notably has more than once knocked off the head leader of the Pakistani Taliban in Baitullah Mehsud(2009) and Hakimullah Mehsud(2013). Baitullah also being a top suspect for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto if we are to keep track of dead 'good' and 'bad' guys.
How many civilians got killed in Libya?
Gaddafi had declared his intention to end the Arab spring uprisings in Libya by "hunting the cockroaches down house by house" and his military advance was within a single city of seizing the control required to implement his promised genocide. Finally at the urging of the Arab League the world(not the US) agreed to act and aborted Gaddafi's genocide of his people.
Or you know, tell it your way and blame the dead Libyan's on the fact things weren't all roses after the genocide was blocked.
Your abject ignorance of all context to the tragedies you reference is growing tiresome.
Let the regime posture and threaten all it wants. They're in enough trouble already with gas prices in the toilet, a state budget about to collapse, and a discontent/unemployed population that is chomping at the bit for reform of the ruling classes....
That's global military spending. Your right about how shaky the future for the regime looks but they are preparing for the future by outspending Russia and the UK on military hardware. Powder keg hardly touches it.
I'd say "Sell them, and you'll never buy another piece of American military equipment again, and there won't be a single US soldier within your borders within six months."
As oil's importance fades, I think the response to anything from Saudi Arabia should "Fuck you, fuck you very very much."
From a principled perspective I agree whole heartedly. They are probably the worst regime in the region as regards terrorism and religious extremism. Practically speaking though there is the list of countries sort by military spending:
When the oil runs out, and Saudi Arabia can no longer just hand out oil money to everybody living there for simply being alive things are gonna get ugly. The're 85% standing unemployment rate is gonna translate into 85% of hungry people with the best military equipment money can buy...
I have to applaud the Saudi Arabian government for "seeing the writing on the wall" about the soon-coming phase-out of dinosaur-burning (fossil fuels) as the major source of energy for the world. They are investing very heavily in renewable energy technologies, as well as some other areas in an attempt to use their sovereign wealth to shift their economy – before the shit really hits the fan – to other potential GDP-producing sectors.
Yeah, they have sold a big portion of the oil – the burning of which has been clearly destructive to our own planet – but other countries wanted to buy this cheap source of concentrated, transportable energy. Recall that "Saudi Aramco" = "Saudi Arabian–American (oil) Company". The US has long since sold off its stake, but that is the genesis of the country.
All other issues (e.g., human rights) aside, Saudi Arabia's leaders are way ahead of the US and many other governments on planning for a post-carbon-energy world. That is long-term planning, and does deserve some respect.
The Saudi Royals are preparing a lot more than their economy. America and China are obviously #1 and #2 in military spending, but let's name #3, and it's NOT Russia. It is none other than the Saudis.
Let's be more frank on their economy too. Efforts to make improvements are good and all, but they are still in a very bad place. The official employment(not unemployment) rate is 12%. Basically, the entire country just floats on top of oil revenues using it to employ foreign workers to extract the oil, hand out money to everyone born in Saudi Arabia, and as an aside buy more military hardware than Russia.
If oil prices cease to sustain themselves Saudi Arabia ends up sitting near 90% unemployment of a religiously indoctrinated population that controls the third most expensive military on the planet,
Forgive me if I'm not enthusiastic towards the Saudi Royal's economic vision just yet.
The models didn't just fail to predict the 'slowdown'.
No climate modeler would expect their climate model to predict such a slowdown so it is incorrect to say they failed to predict it. It has to do with the signal to noise ratio.
So your quibbling with my footnote and ignoring the larger issue I present with comparing models to larger time frames to address the signal to noise issue. The part where models, as a matter of course, CAN NOT accurately hindcast energy imbalance without tuning for parameters we KNOW we don't properly understand yet. I think you are the one underestimating the role of the noise in this equation.
In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Nope. That's not the current consensus view. There have been some studies which have rejected the more dire models for CO2. But your links are a few years old. Basically, your links are referring to issues where models didn't predict the "slowdown" in climate change that happened in the early 2000s. It has now picked up again.
And this is likely just due to random elements in a chaotic system. Subsequent studies have suggested that randomness in the earth's climate from year-to-year probably has multiple times the amount of impact that alterations to the CO2 model (or other factors, like sunlight absorption models, ocean absorption models, etc.) have.
Bottom line: the validity of these models has to be judged over longer timespans, to avoid the year-to-year blips in a chaotic system. With that taken into account, the general CO2 models likely aren't that far off.
The models didn't just fail to predict the 'slowdown'. 111 out of 114 of the models the IPCC evaluated overestimated the only 15 years of data they had to compare them against. You are correct though, the models need to be judged over longer time frames...
The IPCC has an entire section devoted to evaluating models in their last assessment report. If you look down to Box 9.1 they discuss model tuning, and the example of comparing longer time frames through hindcasting, like pre-industrial model runs. The IPCC says the following: maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
For the record, the sum of all natural and human climate forcings act together by changing the TOA energy imbalance. It's the fundamental physics behind more CO2 trapping more energy means warmer temperatures. The part I'd like to draw attention to is that the part of the models that we 'tune' is still sufficient to cause drifting to an unrealistic state.
With 111 out of 114 models underestimating the only dataset we DO have to compare them against, and with the models requiring manual adjustment to hindcast longer time frames realistically, I lack your confidence in their predictive power. The models tell us lots of important things about what we know and what we are trying to test and understand. Don't reject that one of the things they tell us however is that the sum of the unknowns we still tune the models by are important enough to drive the climate to unrealistic states.
Wars were caused in the middle east because the current leaders are all idiots, not because of a religion. The religion's just a propoganda cover story, for the purpose of convincing more idiots to bloe themselves up - or, for people like you to once again bring back the xenophobia. Blacks were once responsible for all our problems: then it was Jews, then Japanese, then Russians, then Chinese, and now the Middle East gets their turn. Do you really think we haven't done this whole spiel before?
Well, to be fair, when it was the Japanese being blamed, they had just hit Pearl Harbor. You also skipped the time everyone was blaming the Nazi's...
Saying that religion has nothing to do with the Middle East's violence is about as stupid as declaring that religion is it's only problem.
Iran and Pakistan are religious states based upon their founding documents. The absolute worst(by nature and population) religious hate mongering is founded in Wahabi Islam, out of Saudi Arabia. All 3 of these states and their neighbours are all intermingled and divided along religious(and other) lines.
Or perhaps more succinctly to the case of Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has a religious element. Arguing as if it's a non factor is criminally incompetent. Going back to the GP, if you ARE willing to declare that Islam is innocent in these events, maybe Christianity deserves a pass too the next time somebody says something homophobic.
The IPCC compared exactly this and found that the last 15 years was warmer than reality in 111 of 114 models. From this, I modestly suggested that is some evidence that we might want to expect the models are estimating on the high side.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you were able to confidently predict that the temperature would remain under what the models were projecting this means that 2 are correlated and the models are functioning correctly. Or, you yourself have a better model that you are using to achieve this confidence. Predicting things (as you have done) requires a model. If it didn't, we just use regression. We don't use regression, we use models. For your prediction to be any good, you must therefore be using a model. Where is this model?
Quit with the word smithing. The models are the consensus 'best guess' at future trends. I pointed out the fundamental problems with our models, as identified by the IPCC. I pointed out their inaccuracy over the only 15 years we could compare them to reality, as identified by the IPCC. I then made the very modest suggestion that our 'best guess' as derived from the models was erring on the high temp side.
The IPCC made no dispute with what my assessment.
Except for the bit where they completely contradicted you.
You never pointed out any such reference so I'll thank you for refraining from repeating that without providing a shred of evidence for it. My entire point was that the model predictions were on the high side. I quoted the IPCC stating 111 of 114 models were on the high side. If you want to claim the IPCC proclaims the opposite you'd better have something a little more persuasive than the IPCC's explanations for WHY they were on the high side...
With us being very confident that things are warming and that our continued emissions will continue to contribute to the warming, we obviously SHOULD be taking action. With us lacking certainty on the severity of future warming, we should probably use past trends as a benchmark for the future and see what it tells us about the 'best guess' the models have. If you look at the IPCC evaluation of models [www.ipcc.ch] they include the following observation:...an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realizations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble...
The link you posted says:
The causes of both the observed GMST trend hiatus and of the model–observation GMST trend difference during 1998–2012 imply that, barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year GMST trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998–2012 (high confidence; see 11.3.6.3. for a full assessment of near-term projections of GMST). The reasons for this implication are fourfold: first, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations are expected to rise further in all RCP scenarios; second, anthropogenic aerosol concentration is expected to decline in all RCP scenarios, and so is the resulting cooling effect; third, the trend in solar forcing is expected to be larger over most near-term 15-year periods than over 1998–2012 (medium confidence), because 1998–2012 contained the full downward phase of the solar cycle; and fourth, it is more likely than not that internal climate variability in the near-term will enhance and not counteract the surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic forcing.
In short, the link you posted contradicts your assertion, since the IPCC says that any variance in the models from the observed temperature for the last 15 years is not indicative of a long term trend differentiation, and the expectation is that the temperature will return to it's prior phase (which, roughly, is what happened)
Besides which, doesn't your methodology essentially involve drawing a regression line through past results and using that to estimate future temperatures? In which case, why would we use models at all? Does such a line actually correctly estimate past temperatures if we map backwards?
You aren't properly reading either my statement or the IPCC's. I stated one of the only meaningful benchmarks to put model results against is reality. The IPCC compared exactly this and found that the last 15 years was warmer than reality in 111 of 114 models. From this, I modestly suggested that is some evidence that we might want to expect the models are estimating on the high side. You know, given that over the only 15 year time span we have for comparison that's what's happened so far. kind of akin to how we expect continued warming because that's what happened over the 100 year time span we have records for.
The IPCC made no dispute with what my assessment. They just differ in stating they believe that future 15 year trends will be significantly higher because then the average would match the predicted. I'm gonna say wait and see. Given the previously noted uncertainty of our models, I can't hardly feel bad about lacking strong faith in their predictive ability,
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change.
So in fact, the outcome could be worse than what the models are predicting?
And THIS is the reason we should do nothing?
I never said a solitary thing about what I thought should or shouldn't be done. I merely pointed out some of the things we are certain about, and some of the things we are less certain of. That you immediately presume I'm lobbying for inaction says every thing about yourself, and nothing about me or the IPCC results I pointed to.
With us being very confident that things are warming and that our continued emissions will continue to contribute to the warming, we obviously SHOULD be taking action. With us lacking certainty on the severity of future warming, we should probably use past trends as a benchmark for the future and see what it tells us about the 'best guess' the models have. If you look at the IPCC evaluation of models they include the following observation:...an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realizations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble...
Since the IPCC wrote that, global averages have trended up again, but we still need several more years like this one to bring the 20 year average in line with the model predicted LOW end. So, if we are to make a guess, it seems we have reason to estimate that the model predictions are, if anything, a bit pessimistic when benchmarked against reality.
If you want my recommendations, I would advocate a shift to nuclear power, like yesterday. Doubly so the more worried we believe we should be about future change. I would advocate for a large shift to electric cars, again starting as soon as possible.
If we could find workable nuclear power that could run an entire country like, say France, we should adopt that more broadly. If we could build an affordable electric car, we should try and get hundreds of thousands of them out to people right away. These of course being things that have ALREADY happened. I vote strongly that these two fronts be the focus as they would massively reduce global emissions, and are financially profitable businesses already today. Unlike solar or wind or all the other 'green' alternatives out there today, they are ready now and require no new research and are not subject to any hedging or what ifs. What is more, the stronger you feel about the urgency of our actions, the more important my path is for the fact it is the fastest and most certain route to lowering our emissions.
computer models that rely on dat athat stops prior to 1976 isn't evidence. That's a broken model.
Well, I guess it's a good thing that there are also people running models with modern data. But that wasn't even my point. The point is that all the tools and data are there to show how the consensus is wrong. And yet, nobody's doing that. If you think the model is broken, please fix it, and show your results. You'll be famous.
There is a middle ground between the consensus being wrong and the models being right. We KNOW the last century has been warming. We KNOW that CO2 concentration has been increasing. We KNOW that CO2 is coming from our activities. We KNOW that increased greenhouse gases will trap more energy and cause warming. That's the consensus. Things like how bad things get by 2100 and what impact our changes in emissions will have are NOT well understood. It's the IPCC that says so too, so again that's also the consensus.
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change. This is because the models CAN NOT realistically hind cast the global energy imbalance, let alone predict it. The IPCC states as much in the fifth AR:...maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system
It's fundamental that the entirety of the physics beneath global warming is more energy being trapped leading to higher temperatures. When the models can NOT accurately hind cast this without being hand tuned, they are NOT able to predict the future impacts either.
That isn't saying models are worthless. Models are terrifically valuable in furthering our understanding of climate functions, and iterative improvements to this will get us to the point where they CAN hind cast energy imbalance on their own. Until they reach that benchmark though, we do not have a strong understanding of what impact future emission and change scenarios look like. We are vastly over stating our understanding to suggest otherwise.
The IPCC declares the loss of the Greenland ice sheet before 2100 virtually impossible.
Citation please. Or well, safe your breath. The IPCC declares nothing like that. Also keep in mind: the IPCC is only the agency that is "distributing the bad news in 'digestible' chunks". They are not "the climate researchers" who actually lay open the bad news.
The IPCC fifth assessment declares exactly that in Chapter 12. Exceptionally unlikely that either Greenland or West Antarctic Ice sheets will suffer near-complete disintegration (high confidence) Note they state both that it is exceptionally unlikely AND that assessment has high confidence.
Want to try again? You just listed some organisations with no proof they (and all their members) are actually doing what is claimed. Sure, it's a pithy argument and looks good, but it is logically bankrupt.
Here's some nice anti-science religious remarks pulled from each of their websites then if you actually question that characterization:
Sierra Club: The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy. Nuclear is no solution to Climate Change... Uranium is one of the 4 Horsemen of the Dirty Fuels Apocalypse I think I can stop once we reach talk of horseman and apocalypse?
GreenPeace: Unless checked, warming from emissions may trigger the irreversible meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet in the coming decades... The IPCC declares the loss of the Greenland ice sheet before 2100 virtually impossible. Thirty Greenpeace activists entered the Borssele nuclear power plant in Zeeland, Netherlands. Can I stop at proudly heralding their illegal activities?
Running out of time but I can pull up WWF later if it's really necessary...
You had better not let the environmentalist religious wackjobs hear you saying that humans can just adapt. They'll burn you at the stake if you're not running around screaming "THE END IS NIGH!!"
Who are these people? The environmentalists I know aren't religious, and are more oriented towards mitigating the issue.
Greenpeace Sierra Club World Wildlife Fund
I could go on, but those are some pretty major, well known examples that you really shouldn't even need to have pointed out to you.
First off Christian describes a very, very broad set of ideas. Secondly, Evolution describes a very, very broad set of ideas. The combinations of them that are in agreement and disagreement is pretty large. Presumably we are ignoring the Christians that fully embrace evolution so I'm ignoring them through out.
David Deutsch makes a compelling argument that the same processes that underlie evolution are responsible for all observable knowledge creation -- including science itself...In the case of scientific thought, the process begins in the human mind, which comes up with various ideas for potential explanations and then subjects them to critical analysis, selecting against ideas that either don't fit observed facts or don't have elegance, explanatory reach or other useful qualities.
Do you really know any Christians who disagree with this in any way shape or form? The core of Christian disagreement with evolution is generally limited to universal common descent, and/or the uniqueness of humans as being created directly by God. The notion of a common ancestor for Chihuahuas and Saint Bernards is something you'd find only a small minority of Christian's disagreeing with. Likewise for all manner of livestock and plants. The notion of applying iterative improvements to ideas and evolutionary design of anything from ideas, to clothes to cars isn't something Christians reject. You're on something of a red herring here.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that the application of evolution to the creation of humans is a miniscule part of science, since that's the part that many religious people have a hard time with (personally, I don't see the problem. Why couldn't God use evolutionary processes? The great thing about variation-and-selection from a creator's perspective is it provides lots of ways to tweak outcomes).
It's awfully safe to make that assumption for any Christian you talk with. Assuming they mean they don't believe in heredity or selective breeding in the last millennia of agriculture is going to start you off on the wrong foot. I'd go as far as to say you're even intending to send the conversation south by making that kind of assumption.
I actually find it somewhat odd that so many people get hung up on the conflict between evolutionary speciation and religion, and not on cosmology and religion. The big bang seems much tougher to reconcile with Biblical creation.
This ties into the answer to your earlier question. Why not accept evolution as the mechanism God setup/used for creation? The answer is that many actually do. The ones that do not, do so for theological reasons. The uniqueness of man is important to more than just the first chapter of the Bible, and for groups like the Catholic church and others, original sin and thus a literal Adam hold some importance. The creation of stars and planets and such is a lot less important. If it alters between literal or figurative interpretation of 5 verses, no big deal for most interpretations of the rest of Bible so no problem for people to say who cares. So, the how of the creation of stars and planets doesn't really matter to most. The how of the creation of plants and animals, matters a little bit more. The how of the creation of humans though can be quite important and thus is treated special for theological, not scientific reasons.
I think in terms of total probability, the US is more likely to launch a nuclear strike on DPRK than it is to invade and fight a ground war there.
DPRK is armed to the teeth with conventional weapons and has had 60 years to dig in deep, making a conventional ground assault extremely painful. Not that the US couldn't *win* such a fight should it choose to dedicate the resources, but it would be extremely resource and manpower intensive.
And for what possible gain? No appreciable natural resources, a civilian refugee crisis of epic proportions, a diplomatic shitshow with China and Russia, both of which would use a US commitment to pursue every bit of mischief they are capable of and a price tag in the trillions. Not to mention the global economic ding from the likely destruction Seoul and the disruption to a not-insignificant part of the global supply chain.
Kim's nuclear ambitions are equally ridiculous. They're decades away from any kind of reliable and effective long-range nuclear weapons program and even when they get to the point where they have a half-assed accurate ICBM that can deliver a half-assed effective nuclear weapon, what are they going to do? Any serious *attempt* at using it or even believably threatening to use it, faces the existential threat of a US retaliation that would annihilate them, something that not even the USSR at its peak could avoid, either.
Which is all a great and pretty accurate assessment of why all of us should selfishly leave the North Korean state alone. The humanitarian plight of North Korean civilians is just so much collateral damage that we will accept, and more importantly not talk about. The multi-generational dictatorship run as a slave state will continue to leave about 25 million people living under a crime family that runs things like an Egyptian Pharaoh. Complete with worshipping the past, present and future rulers as deities. the only meaningful difference is that instead of a national effort to build pyramids, they are being driven to build nuclear weapons and rockets to deliver them globally. Ignoring the humanitarian catastrophe for the last decades has just made it worse, the future will too.
The same way it is caught in Linux. The updates go through evaluation. If a source of updates with REALLY bad/improper updates - it gets banned. And no more updates from the bad source.
My my heart bleeds for your ignorance. Plenty of major security flaws have gone undiscovered and unnoticed in open source projects for long time frames. Simply saying we can trust changes by guys Putin hired because "open source" is naive in the extreme.
For Putin's government, I would say an OS designed to serve Putin's interest is probably a better alternative for Putin - and that's what we're discussing.
No, the grand parent stated: Hopefully Russian computer scientists will focus on either making ReactOS a usable replacement (better for us in the West trying to dump Windows)
So a Putin sponsored ReactOS is declared as a better option for the West to move to from Windows. It is absurd, and it was duly and accurately called out as stupidity. Stupidty that got rated +5 insightfull no less.
ReactOS is open source. If Russia contributes to it, it helps everybody in the world that can access the source. The fact that it helps Putin does not mean it cannot help other people.
Of course, if Putin wanted to, the Russian government could make a closed-source fork of ReactOS, but that's obviously not what I was hoping for--hence why I started the statement with "hopefully".
Because "open source" and "full source audit for security holes both accidental and deliberate" are synonymous? If you've got a code base of hundreds of thousands of lines, and Putin's employees add a bunch of features and fixes that comprise 10s of thousands of lines, how exactly do you tell the good from the bad? Sure, some bad stuff can eventually get caught. Sure, it's easier to catch than with closed source. Let's not pretend though that KGB agents are beyond trying to hide problems in plain sight that they can exploit.
My point was to correct the possible perception you or anyone else has about "tiny" nukes being something the DPRK has, or would be able to use in any offensive capability. Your casual use of the technology has the potential of inflate the fear mongering, especially next statements about "nuclear or thermonuclear warheads" and lack of mention of "cost" for any of those things. The 3rd world economy of the DPRK, and tyrannical government, mean that they do not have the budge or manpower for any meaningful development of WMDs like nukes.
In your eagerness to stop the fear mongering you badly understate North Korea's capability. Sure, they can barely feed their people. 20 years ago guys like you declared the same things, that the North's economy and tyranny made scientific accomplishments like nukes and rockets impossible. Since then they've detonated nukes(plural) and launched satellites(plural again). I'm not sure where you've set the bar for 'meaningful' but the North has made succeeded in building nuclear weapons and launching rockets around the world. Refining and improving that is well within their ability, they just need the time. I can only interpret your level of meaningful to mean that they can't reasonably develop a large enough arsenal to match existing nuclear powers. Given how brutal, cruel and tyrannical the Godkings inheriting North Korea are, that's small comfort.
The reality is that if Seoul wasn't housing 10million people within range of North Korean artillery, NATO probably would have removed the Kim dynasty generations ago. All the hand wringing is watching a very nasty family growing more and more powerful while we fear the cost of their removal too much to contemplate it.
Slashdot Mirror
Robots. Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, people are quick to claim such a raise in labor costs will just accelerate adoption of automation. But if we had basic income in lieu of a minimum wage, then such automation would be unequivocally positive.
In the original article Sam Altman states that even if only 10% of people bother to still do any work, it'd still be a net-win. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the robot revolution's not here yet. We need more than 10% of the workforce just to get food to everyone with current technology. It's not much of a stretch to observe that more than 10% of the workforce is gonna be needed to keep things from imploding.
In order for millions of people to eat, you need people making food.
All of the food consumed in the US (and most other industrialized countries) is produced by far less than 10% of the population.
You can't stop your counting at the folks working on the farms growing and raising the food. Even if everyone is supposed to drive themselves out to the farms to pick the raw produce and animals so they can process and butcher it themselves. At the least you've still got to have people working to build the car you drive out with and the tools you use to process it and the energy you power the car with.
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the robotic revolution isn't here yet. The basics we rely upon for survival sit atop a mountain of manual labour currently performed by us meat bags.
In order for millions of people to wear clothing, you need people making clothes. In order for millions of people to have a roof over their heads, somebody has to build it.
So pay people to do those things. If someone is getting $10,000 as a Basic Income from the government, I bet you'll still be able to get them to work in manufacturing and construction if you pay them an additional $20,000.
The article is claiming this would all work if 90% of the population wouldn't take up your offer. With us requiring about 10% of the population to produce enough food right now. It's going to be lean times for everyone if that's the sole remaining workforce, even worse if heaven forbid some of them decide to take a rest too.
So who's gonna make the food, clothing, and shelter in this world? Even if we assume it's cool and we'll just raid the 50% of wealth held by the 1%, you can't eat, wear or live under cash and gold. In order for millions of people to eat, you need people making food. In order for millions of people to wear clothing, you need people making clothes. In order for millions of people to have a roof over their heads, somebody has to build it.
Simply put, if 90% of the population just stopped doing anything but consume what's in front of them we would hit mass starvation as we spent the last of the 1%'s remaining money to buy food abroad. After that would be a monstrous civil war as the hungry masses try and survive. Similar experiments have been tried in the past with bad result.
Good for you, quoting AR5 like a boss - the AR5 which says, in part:
No correlation is found between biases in global mean surface temperature and equilibrium climate sensitivity, and so mean temperature biases do not obviously affect the modelled response to GHG forcing. There is very high confidence that the primary factor contributing to the spread in equilibrium climate sensitivity continues to be the cloud feedback. This applies to both the modern climate and the LGM. There is likewise very high confidence that, consistent with observations, models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations....
When using the models to hindcast past temperatures, unknowns like clouds drive the energy imbalance into "an unrealistic state". The energy imbalance is the driver of climate change and the models still have to make hand tuned corrections to keep hindcasts realistic.
Oh whoops. You misunderstood.
I can see your mistake. You are conflating cloud forcing with water vapour forcing. Unlike water vapour that traps energy, clouds reflect it both away from the planet and back down onto it. The overall global impact is tricky because it depends on location, time of day, cloud composition, altitude and other factors. These factors aren't modelled well yet because they can hinge on actions happening at much smaller sizes than current modelled grids. Go back and read the IPCC Box 9.1 again and you'll see I'm very accurately quoting it. Global TOA energy imbalance, that drives climate change, will go to unrealistic states in current models unless hand tuning for unknown and poorly known factors are accounted for. Almost without exception, clouds are the largest tuning factor adjusted in the models included in AR5.
There IS however a lot we still don't understand properly, enough that the impact of those unknowns drive the models HARDER than the CO2 we've been dumping.
No: AR5 says: biases in cloud simulation lead to regional errors ...
on cloud radiative effect of several tens of watts per square meter
Did you not read it?
Yeah, I've read that, but unlike yourself I also understood it. The global energy imbalance is less than 1 Watt per square meter, that small difference has driven the 1C of rise over the last century. CO2's total trapping of energy as of 2014 is just shy of 2 watts per square meter(NOAA). Several tens of Watts per square meter as fluctuation, even regionally, kinda makes a big impact in that context, no? Thus, it corroborates and reflects well with current modellers emphasis and correcting for unknowns in cloud forcing by tuning for it.
Now in all likelyhood the unknowns aren't pushing temperature one way or another, but that's an assumption at this stage(and a reasonable one).
No, AR5 says that the feedback from clouds has been both modeled and observed as positive - did you not read the paper you cited?
Let me point you back again to your section you referenced, you are substituting clouds in for water vapour, you can't do that:
models show a strong positive correlation between tropospheric temperature and water vapour on regional to global scales, implying a positive water vapour feedback in both models and observations.
Well, if number 3 is true, it's probably time to consider killing yourself.
That scenario suggests firstly that some undetectable phenomena is driving climate change, and also that some undetectable phenomena is preventing the warming that should have occurred from rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, there is a century long conspiracy plot...
Let's stop there and be a little more honest. The GP was more honestly asking what are the unknowns. How much of current warming do we attribute to human activity and how much to natural fluctuations. Are best metric for that are the models, and here's the state of the art from the IPCC's fifth assessment. From Box 9.1:
maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
When using the models to hindcast past temperatures, unknowns like clouds drive the energy imbalance into "an unrealistic state". The energy imbalance is the driver of climate change and the models still have to make hand tuned corrections to keep hindcasts realistic.
There's not some undetectable or magical force acting to confound all our current understanding of CO2 impact on recent warming. There IS however a lot we still don't understand properly, enough that the impact of those unknowns drive the models HARDER than the CO2 we've been dumping. Now in all likelyhood the unknowns aren't pushing temperature one way or another, but that's an assumption at this stage(and a reasonable one). However, when tryign to map out the next 100 years and our impact on it, we might want to hold a large caveat on the possibility that the unknowns we are working at are a major factor and most certainly impact our confidence in any projections.
The thing is - everything you say is true - and none of it matters one bit.
This is about the perceptions people have...
Well if you are only caring about public opinion and popularity then I have no disagreement. Standing back and ignoring the world from an isolationist position is the most popular thing any government can do, both domestically and abroad. Bill Clinton still hasn't really taken any flak about Rwanda because he made the smart move and ignored the genocide there during his presidency. Also, as you observe, had he acted to try and prevent the murder of 800,000 Rwandans and even successfully stopped the violence at a mere 50k dead, the headlines would all read about how American invasion of Rwanda killed thousands.
Here's the thing though. Most countries have signed the global declaration on genocide. That includes an agreement to act to prevent a genocide, like in Rwanda and Libya. It also includes that failing that, to act to punish those responsible for genocide, like Saddam and Omar Al-Bashir. Whether it's popular or not, I take the stand that it's the right thing to do.
Just try turning it around... would you be happy if the Russian Military showed up un-asked and started bombing Washington and New York next year to protect you from Trump's evil ?
First off, I'd be watching from the outside as I'm a Canadian, not an American. My government enjoys a lot more popularity globally because we generally don't help/intervene and instead provide the wonderfully useless role of giving talks on the importance of peace that both sides should embrace.
More importantly, your analogy is beyond flawed. You need to describe what makes Trump like Saddam. On his first day of office does he round up congress, accuse half of them as traitors and force the other half to execute the traitors in the parking lot? That was Saddam's first day. Does he outlaw any criticism of himself and his policies. Does he convert the jails to include rape rooms for the wives and daughters of dissidents? Does he enact the genocide of hundreds of thousands on multiple occasions. Does he consolidate his power so ruthlessly and completely that Americans lose all hope of ever being free of him through their own power? If you paint the picture that deep then you've got an analogy. You'll not it's a little different from tolerating 4 years of clown passing a pile of bad policy before failing to be re-elected.
>Plenty of freedom fighters around the world and throughout history refrain from inciting terror among civilians.
There's probably nobody in the world who strikes more terror into the hearts of civilians than the US Military. There's a reason Noam Chomsky keeps pointing out that the unwritten part of the FBI's definition of "terrorism" must be "unless it's us doing it".
The Iraqi Kurds cheering at the site of American forces and jets since the first Gulf war being a notable exception.
The Iraq civilian death toll is well over a hundred thousand.
Saddam executed a deliberate genocide of Iraqi Kurds long before that, with an estimated 150-350 thousand killed. And those were not collateral casualties due to the use of human shields or suicide bombings by the Kurdish resistance. Those were civilians loaded unto buses to be shot in the desert and burried by bulldozer.
Saddam committed a second genocide at the end of the first Gulf War as Bush listened to chaps like yourself and stopped short of marching in Iraq. American forces were ordered to stand down and watch as Saddam's gunships led the charge that would kill another estimated 100+ thousand civilians.
Apologies, I know that context messes with your agenda.
Nobody even knows exactly how many people have been killed by drones in Pakistan but we do know that a lot of them were civilians - often civilians who just happened to park next to a target that may or may not be a legitimate target (we can't really tell if they are because we don't get to know who they are).
I'll tell you what people do know about the number of people killed in Pakistan. The TTP(Pakistani Taliban) kill 100 plus Pakistanis for every life lost in drone strikes. The number of Al Qaida and Taliban leaders killed by drone strikes is also too long to include here, but notably has more than once knocked off the head leader of the Pakistani Taliban in Baitullah Mehsud(2009) and Hakimullah Mehsud(2013). Baitullah also being a top suspect for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto if we are to keep track of dead 'good' and 'bad' guys.
How many civilians got killed in Libya?
Gaddafi had declared his intention to end the Arab spring uprisings in Libya by "hunting the cockroaches down house by house" and his military advance was within a single city of seizing the control required to implement his promised genocide. Finally at the urging of the Arab League the world(not the US) agreed to act and aborted Gaddafi's genocide of his people.
Or you know, tell it your way and blame the dead Libyan's on the fact things weren't all roses after the genocide was blocked.
Your abject ignorance of all context to the tragedies you reference is growing tiresome.
Let the regime posture and threaten all it wants. They're in enough trouble already with gas prices in the toilet, a state budget about to collapse, and a discontent/unemployed population that is chomping at the bit for reform of the ruling classes....
1.USA $597.5 billion
2.China $145.8 billion
3.Saudi Arabia $81.8 billion
4.UK $56.2 billion
5.Russia $51.6
That's global military spending. Your right about how shaky the future for the regime looks but they are preparing for the future by outspending Russia and the UK on military hardware. Powder keg hardly touches it.
I'd say "Sell them, and you'll never buy another piece of American military equipment again, and there won't be a single US soldier within your borders within six months."
As oil's importance fades, I think the response to anything from Saudi Arabia should "Fuck you, fuck you very very much."
From a principled perspective I agree whole heartedly. They are probably the worst regime in the region as regards terrorism and religious extremism. Practically speaking though there is the list of countries sort by military spending:
1.USA $597.5 billion
2.China $145.8 billion
3.Saudi Arabia $81.8 billion
4.UK $56.2 billion
5.Russia $51.6
When the oil runs out, and Saudi Arabia can no longer just hand out oil money to everybody living there for simply being alive things are gonna get ugly. The're 85% standing unemployment rate is gonna translate into 85% of hungry people with the best military equipment money can buy...
This is off-topic, but hear me out.
I have to applaud the Saudi Arabian government for "seeing the writing on the wall" about the soon-coming phase-out of dinosaur-burning (fossil fuels) as the major source of energy for the world. They are investing very heavily in renewable energy technologies, as well as some other areas in an attempt to use their sovereign wealth to shift their economy – before the shit really hits the fan – to other potential GDP-producing sectors.
Yeah, they have sold a big portion of the oil – the burning of which has been clearly destructive to our own planet – but other countries wanted to buy this cheap source of concentrated, transportable energy. Recall that "Saudi Aramco" = "Saudi Arabian–American (oil) Company". The US has long since sold off its stake, but that is the genesis of the country.
All other issues (e.g., human rights) aside, Saudi Arabia's leaders are way ahead of the US and many other governments on planning for a post-carbon-energy world. That is long-term planning, and does deserve some respect.
The Saudi Royals are preparing a lot more than their economy. America and China are obviously #1 and #2 in military spending, but let's name #3, and it's NOT Russia. It is none other than the Saudis.
Let's be more frank on their economy too. Efforts to make improvements are good and all, but they are still in a very bad place. The official employment(not unemployment) rate is 12%. Basically, the entire country just floats on top of oil revenues using it to employ foreign workers to extract the oil, hand out money to everyone born in Saudi Arabia, and as an aside buy more military hardware than Russia.
If oil prices cease to sustain themselves Saudi Arabia ends up sitting near 90% unemployment of a religiously indoctrinated population that controls the third most expensive military on the planet,
Forgive me if I'm not enthusiastic towards the Saudi Royal's economic vision just yet.
The models didn't just fail to predict the 'slowdown'.
No climate modeler would expect their climate model to predict such a slowdown so it is incorrect to say they failed to predict it. It has to do with the signal to noise ratio.
So your quibbling with my footnote and ignoring the larger issue I present with comparing models to larger time frames to address the signal to noise issue. The part where models, as a matter of course, CAN NOT accurately hindcast energy imbalance without tuning for parameters we KNOW we don't properly understand yet. I think you are the one underestimating the role of the noise in this equation.
In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Nope. That's not the current consensus view. There have been some studies which have rejected the more dire models for CO2. But your links are a few years old. Basically, your links are referring to issues where models didn't predict the "slowdown" in climate change that happened in the early 2000s. It has now picked up again.
And this is likely just due to random elements in a chaotic system. Subsequent studies have suggested that randomness in the earth's climate from year-to-year probably has multiple times the amount of impact that alterations to the CO2 model (or other factors, like sunlight absorption models, ocean absorption models, etc.) have.
Bottom line: the validity of these models has to be judged over longer timespans, to avoid the year-to-year blips in a chaotic system. With that taken into account, the general CO2 models likely aren't that far off.
The models didn't just fail to predict the 'slowdown'. 111 out of 114 of the models the IPCC evaluated overestimated the only 15 years of data they had to compare them against. You are correct though, the models need to be judged over longer time frames...
The IPCC has an entire section devoted to evaluating models in their last assessment report. If you look down to Box 9.1 they discuss model tuning, and the example of comparing longer time frames through hindcasting, like pre-industrial model runs. The IPCC says the following:
maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
For the record, the sum of all natural and human climate forcings act together by changing the TOA energy imbalance. It's the fundamental physics behind more CO2 trapping more energy means warmer temperatures. The part I'd like to draw attention to is that the part of the models that we 'tune' is still sufficient to cause drifting to an unrealistic state.
With 111 out of 114 models underestimating the only dataset we DO have to compare them against, and with the models requiring manual adjustment to hindcast longer time frames realistically, I lack your confidence in their predictive power. The models tell us lots of important things about what we know and what we are trying to test and understand. Don't reject that one of the things they tell us however is that the sum of the unknowns we still tune the models by are important enough to drive the climate to unrealistic states.
Wars were caused in the middle east because the current leaders are all idiots, not because of a religion. The religion's just a propoganda cover story, for the purpose of convincing more idiots to bloe themselves up - or, for people like you to once again bring back the xenophobia. Blacks were once responsible for all our problems: then it was Jews, then Japanese, then Russians, then Chinese, and now the Middle East gets their turn. Do you really think we haven't done this whole spiel before?
Well, to be fair, when it was the Japanese being blamed, they had just hit Pearl Harbor. You also skipped the time everyone was blaming the Nazi's...
Saying that religion has nothing to do with the Middle East's violence is about as stupid as declaring that religion is it's only problem.
Iran and Pakistan are religious states based upon their founding documents. The absolute worst(by nature and population) religious hate mongering is founded in Wahabi Islam, out of Saudi Arabia. All 3 of these states and their neighbours are all intermingled and divided along religious(and other) lines.
Or perhaps more succinctly to the case of Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, has a religious element. Arguing as if it's a non factor is criminally incompetent. Going back to the GP, if you ARE willing to declare that Islam is innocent in these events, maybe Christianity deserves a pass too the next time somebody says something homophobic.
The IPCC compared exactly this and found that the last 15 years was warmer than reality in 111 of 114 models. From this, I modestly suggested that is some evidence that we might want to expect the models are estimating on the high side.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If you were able to confidently predict that the temperature would remain under what the models were projecting this means that 2 are correlated and the models are functioning correctly. Or, you yourself have a better model that you are using to achieve this confidence. Predicting things (as you have done) requires a model. If it didn't, we just use regression. We don't use regression, we use models. For your prediction to be any good, you must therefore be using a model. Where is this model?
Quit with the word smithing. The models are the consensus 'best guess' at future trends. I pointed out the fundamental problems with our models, as identified by the IPCC. I pointed out their inaccuracy over the only 15 years we could compare them to reality, as identified by the IPCC. I then made the very modest suggestion that our 'best guess' as derived from the models was erring on the high temp side.
The IPCC made no dispute with what my assessment.
Except for the bit where they completely contradicted you.
You never pointed out any such reference so I'll thank you for refraining from repeating that without providing a shred of evidence for it. My entire point was that the model predictions were on the high side. I quoted the IPCC stating 111 of 114 models were on the high side. If you want to claim the IPCC proclaims the opposite you'd better have something a little more persuasive than the IPCC's explanations for WHY they were on the high side...
With us being very confident that things are warming and that our continued emissions will continue to contribute to the warming, we obviously SHOULD be taking action. With us lacking certainty on the severity of future warming, we should probably use past trends as a benchmark for the future and see what it tells us about the 'best guess' the models have. If you look at the IPCC evaluation of models [www.ipcc.ch] they include the following observation: ...an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realizations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble...
The link you posted says:
The causes of both the observed GMST trend hiatus and of the model–observation GMST trend difference during 1998–2012 imply
that, barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year GMST trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998–2012
(high confidence; see 11.3.6.3. for a full assessment of near-term projections of GMST). The reasons for this implication are fourfold:
first, anthropogenic greenhouse-gas concentrations are expected to rise further in all RCP scenarios; second, anthropogenic aerosol
concentration is expected to decline in all RCP scenarios, and so is the resulting cooling effect; third, the trend in solar forcing is
expected to be larger over most near-term 15-year periods than over 1998–2012 (medium confidence), because 1998–2012 contained
the full downward phase of the solar cycle; and fourth, it is more likely than not that internal climate variability in the near-term will
enhance and not counteract the surface warming expected to arise from the increasing anthropogenic forcing.
In short, the link you posted contradicts your assertion, since the IPCC says that any variance in the models from the observed temperature for the last 15 years is not indicative of a long term trend differentiation, and the expectation is that the temperature will return to it's prior phase (which, roughly, is what happened)
Besides which, doesn't your methodology essentially involve drawing a regression line through past results and using that to estimate future temperatures? In which case, why would we use models at all? Does such a line actually correctly estimate past temperatures if we map backwards?
You aren't properly reading either my statement or the IPCC's. I stated one of the only meaningful benchmarks to put model results against is reality. The IPCC compared exactly this and found that the last 15 years was warmer than reality in 111 of 114 models. From this, I modestly suggested that is some evidence that we might want to expect the models are estimating on the high side. You know, given that over the only 15 year time span we have for comparison that's what's happened so far. kind of akin to how we expect continued warming because that's what happened over the 100 year time span we have records for.
The IPCC made no dispute with what my assessment. They just differ in stating they believe that future 15 year trends will be significantly higher because then the average would match the predicted. I'm gonna say wait and see. Given the previously noted uncertainty of our models, I can't hardly feel bad about lacking strong faith in their predictive ability,
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change.
So in fact, the outcome could be worse than what the models are predicting?
And THIS is the reason we should do nothing?
I never said a solitary thing about what I thought should or shouldn't be done. I merely pointed out some of the things we are certain about, and some of the things we are less certain of. That you immediately presume I'm lobbying for inaction says every thing about yourself, and nothing about me or the IPCC results I pointed to.
With us being very confident that things are warming and that our continued emissions will continue to contribute to the warming, we obviously SHOULD be taking action. With us lacking certainty on the severity of future warming, we should probably use past trends as a benchmark for the future and see what it tells us about the 'best guess' the models have. If you look at the IPCC evaluation of models they include the following observation: ...an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realizations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble...
Since the IPCC wrote that, global averages have trended up again, but we still need several more years like this one to bring the 20 year average in line with the model predicted LOW end. So, if we are to make a guess, it seems we have reason to estimate that the model predictions are, if anything, a bit pessimistic when benchmarked against reality.
If you want my recommendations, I would advocate a shift to nuclear power, like yesterday. Doubly so the more worried we believe we should be about future change. I would advocate for a large shift to electric cars, again starting as soon as possible.
If we could find workable nuclear power that could run an entire country like, say France, we should adopt that more broadly. If we could build an affordable electric car, we should try and get hundreds of thousands of them out to people right away. These of course being things that have ALREADY happened. I vote strongly that these two fronts be the focus as they would massively reduce global emissions, and are financially profitable businesses already today. Unlike solar or wind or all the other 'green' alternatives out there today, they are ready now and require no new research and are not subject to any hedging or what ifs. What is more, the stronger you feel about the urgency of our actions, the more important my path is for the fact it is the fastest and most certain route to lowering our emissions.
computer models that rely on dat athat stops prior to 1976 isn't evidence. That's a broken model.
Well, I guess it's a good thing that there are also people running models with modern data. But that wasn't even my point. The point is that all the tools and data are there to show how the consensus is wrong. And yet, nobody's doing that. If you think the model is broken, please fix it, and show your results. You'll be famous.
There is a middle ground between the consensus being wrong and the models being right.
We KNOW the last century has been warming.
We KNOW that CO2 concentration has been increasing.
We KNOW that CO2 is coming from our activities.
We KNOW that increased greenhouse gases will trap more energy and cause warming.
That's the consensus. Things like how bad things get by 2100 and what impact our changes in emissions will have are NOT well understood. It's the IPCC that says so too, so again that's also the consensus.
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change. This is because the models CAN NOT realistically hind cast the global energy imbalance, let alone predict it. The IPCC states as much in the fifth AR: ...maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system
It's fundamental that the entirety of the physics beneath global warming is more energy being trapped leading to higher temperatures. When the models can NOT accurately hind cast this without being hand tuned, they are NOT able to predict the future impacts either.
That isn't saying models are worthless. Models are terrifically valuable in furthering our understanding of climate functions, and iterative improvements to this will get us to the point where they CAN hind cast energy imbalance on their own. Until they reach that benchmark though, we do not have a strong understanding of what impact future emission and change scenarios look like. We are vastly over stating our understanding to suggest otherwise.
The IPCC declares the loss of the Greenland ice sheet before 2100 virtually impossible.
Citation please.
Or well, safe your breath. The IPCC declares nothing like that.
Also keep in mind: the IPCC is only the agency that is "distributing the bad news in 'digestible' chunks".
They are not "the climate researchers" who actually lay open the bad news.
The IPCC fifth assessment declares exactly that in Chapter 12.
Exceptionally unlikely that either Greenland or West Antarctic Ice sheets will suffer near-complete disintegration (high confidence)
Note they state both that it is exceptionally unlikely AND that assessment has high confidence.
Want to try again? You just listed some organisations with no proof they (and all their members) are actually doing what is claimed. Sure, it's a pithy argument and looks good, but it is logically bankrupt.
Here's some nice anti-science religious remarks pulled from each of their websites then if you actually question that characterization:
Sierra Club:
The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy.
Nuclear is no solution to Climate Change...
Uranium is one of the 4 Horsemen of the Dirty Fuels Apocalypse
I think I can stop once we reach talk of horseman and apocalypse?
GreenPeace:
Unless checked, warming from emissions may trigger the irreversible meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet in the coming decades...
The IPCC declares the loss of the Greenland ice sheet before 2100 virtually impossible.
Thirty Greenpeace activists entered the Borssele nuclear power plant in Zeeland, Netherlands.
Can I stop at proudly heralding their illegal activities?
Running out of time but I can pull up WWF later if it's really necessary...
You had better not let the environmentalist religious wackjobs hear you saying that humans can just adapt. They'll burn you at the stake if you're not running around screaming "THE END IS NIGH!!"
Who are these people? The environmentalists I know aren't religious, and are more oriented towards mitigating the issue.
Greenpeace
Sierra Club
World Wildlife Fund
I could go on, but those are some pretty major, well known examples that you really shouldn't even need to have pointed out to you.
First off Christian describes a very, very broad set of ideas. Secondly, Evolution describes a very, very broad set of ideas. The combinations of them that are in agreement and disagreement is pretty large. Presumably we are ignoring the Christians that fully embrace evolution so I'm ignoring them through out.
David Deutsch makes a compelling argument that the same processes that underlie evolution are responsible for all observable knowledge creation -- including science itself...In the case of scientific thought, the process begins in the human mind, which comes up with various ideas for potential explanations and then subjects them to critical analysis, selecting against ideas that either don't fit observed facts or don't have elegance, explanatory reach or other useful qualities.
Do you really know any Christians who disagree with this in any way shape or form? The core of Christian disagreement with evolution is generally limited to universal common descent, and/or the uniqueness of humans as being created directly by God. The notion of a common ancestor for Chihuahuas and Saint Bernards is something you'd find only a small minority of Christian's disagreeing with. Likewise for all manner of livestock and plants. The notion of applying iterative improvements to ideas and evolutionary design of anything from ideas, to clothes to cars isn't something Christians reject. You're on something of a red herring here.
Perhaps what you meant to say is that the application of evolution to the creation of humans is a miniscule part of science, since that's the part that many religious people have a hard time with (personally, I don't see the problem. Why couldn't God use evolutionary processes? The great thing about variation-and-selection from a creator's perspective is it provides lots of ways to tweak outcomes).
It's awfully safe to make that assumption for any Christian you talk with. Assuming they mean they don't believe in heredity or selective breeding in the last millennia of agriculture is going to start you off on the wrong foot. I'd go as far as to say you're even intending to send the conversation south by making that kind of assumption.
I actually find it somewhat odd that so many people get hung up on the conflict between evolutionary speciation and religion, and not on cosmology and religion. The big bang seems much tougher to reconcile with Biblical creation.
This ties into the answer to your earlier question. Why not accept evolution as the mechanism God setup/used for creation? The answer is that many actually do. The ones that do not, do so for theological reasons. The uniqueness of man is important to more than just the first chapter of the Bible, and for groups like the Catholic church and others, original sin and thus a literal Adam hold some importance. The creation of stars and planets and such is a lot less important. If it alters between literal or figurative interpretation of 5 verses, no big deal for most interpretations of the rest of Bible so no problem for people to say who cares. So, the how of the creation of stars and planets doesn't really matter to most. The how of the creation of plants and animals, matters a little bit more. The how of the creation of humans though can be quite important and thus is treated special for theological, not scientific reasons.
I think in terms of total probability, the US is more likely to launch a nuclear strike on DPRK than it is to invade and fight a ground war there.
DPRK is armed to the teeth with conventional weapons and has had 60 years to dig in deep, making a conventional ground assault extremely painful. Not that the US couldn't *win* such a fight should it choose to dedicate the resources, but it would be extremely resource and manpower intensive.
And for what possible gain? No appreciable natural resources, a civilian refugee crisis of epic proportions, a diplomatic shitshow with China and Russia, both of which would use a US commitment to pursue every bit of mischief they are capable of and a price tag in the trillions. Not to mention the global economic ding from the likely destruction Seoul and the disruption to a not-insignificant part of the global supply chain.
Kim's nuclear ambitions are equally ridiculous. They're decades away from any kind of reliable and effective long-range nuclear weapons program and even when they get to the point where they have a half-assed accurate ICBM that can deliver a half-assed effective nuclear weapon, what are they going to do? Any serious *attempt* at using it or even believably threatening to use it, faces the existential threat of a US retaliation that would annihilate them, something that not even the USSR at its peak could avoid, either.
Which is all a great and pretty accurate assessment of why all of us should selfishly leave the North Korean state alone. The humanitarian plight of North Korean
civilians is just so much collateral damage that we will accept, and more importantly not talk about. The multi-generational dictatorship run as a slave state will continue to leave about 25 million people living under a crime family that runs things like an Egyptian Pharaoh. Complete with worshipping the past, present and future rulers as deities. the only meaningful difference is that instead of a national effort to build pyramids, they are being driven to build nuclear weapons and rockets to deliver them globally. Ignoring the humanitarian catastrophe for the last decades has just made it worse, the future will too.
The same way it is caught in Linux. The updates go through evaluation. If a source of updates with REALLY bad/improper updates - it gets banned. And no more updates from the bad source.
My my heart bleeds for your ignorance. Plenty of major security flaws have gone undiscovered and unnoticed in open source projects for long time frames. Simply saying we can trust changes by guys Putin hired because "open source" is naive in the extreme.
For Putin's government, I would say an OS designed to serve Putin's interest is probably a better alternative for Putin - and that's what we're discussing.
No, the grand parent stated:
Hopefully Russian computer scientists will focus on either making ReactOS a usable replacement (better for us in the West trying to dump Windows)
So a Putin sponsored ReactOS is declared as a better option for the West to move to from Windows. It is absurd, and it was duly and accurately called out as stupidity. Stupidty that got rated +5 insightfull no less.
ReactOS is open source. If Russia contributes to it, it helps everybody in the world that can access the source. The fact that it helps Putin does not mean it cannot help other people.
Of course, if Putin wanted to, the Russian government could make a closed-source fork of ReactOS, but that's obviously not what I was hoping for--hence why I started the statement with "hopefully".
Because "open source" and "full source audit for security holes both accidental and deliberate" are synonymous? If you've got a code base of hundreds of thousands of lines, and Putin's employees add a bunch of features and fixes that comprise 10s of thousands of lines, how exactly do you tell the good from the bad? Sure, some bad stuff can eventually get caught. Sure, it's easier to catch than with closed source. Let's not pretend though that KGB agents are beyond trying to hide problems in plain sight that they can exploit.
My point was to correct the possible perception you or anyone else has about "tiny" nukes being something the DPRK has, or would be able to use in any offensive capability. Your casual use of the technology has the potential of inflate the fear mongering, especially next statements about "nuclear or thermonuclear warheads" and lack of mention of "cost" for any of those things. The 3rd world economy of the DPRK, and tyrannical government, mean that they do not have the budge or manpower for any meaningful development of WMDs like nukes.
In your eagerness to stop the fear mongering you badly understate North Korea's capability. Sure, they can barely feed their people. 20 years ago guys like you declared the same things, that the North's economy and tyranny made scientific accomplishments like nukes and rockets impossible. Since then they've detonated nukes(plural) and launched satellites(plural again). I'm not sure where you've set the bar for 'meaningful' but the North has made succeeded in building nuclear weapons and launching rockets around the world. Refining and improving that is well within their ability, they just need the time. I can only interpret your level of meaningful to mean that they can't reasonably develop a large enough arsenal to match existing nuclear powers. Given how brutal, cruel and tyrannical the Godkings inheriting North Korea are, that's small comfort.
The reality is that if Seoul wasn't housing 10million people within range of North Korean artillery, NATO probably would have removed the Kim dynasty generations ago. All the hand wringing is watching a very nasty family growing more and more powerful while we fear the cost of their removal too much to contemplate it.