So what’s up with this 38 percent figure, and does it really undermine the idea that 2014 was the hottest year on record?
The figure comes from slide 5 of the PowerPoint presentation mentioned above, where NASA scientists noted that there was a 38 percent chance that 2014 was the hottest year, but only a 23 percent chance that the honor goes to the next contender, 2010, and a 17 percent chance that it goes to 2005.
The same slide shows that NOAA’s scientists were even more confident in the 2014 record, ranking it as having a 48 percent probability, compared with only an 18 percent chance for 2010 and a 13 percent chance for 2005. Here is the slide: http://img.washingtonpost.com/...
so, as usual, scientists said something scientific, reasonably assuming a scientific understanding of statistics on the part of the listeners (it being intended for an audience familiar with the subject), and instead a group of ignorant people heard it, interpreted it wrongly, and ran with it, spreading misinformation in the process.
its not just "1 month". its a specific month in a known cycle, being compared to past months in the same place in the same cycle. for reference, the earth orbits the sun, and the earth is tilted. this created a cycle we call "seasons". this makes it possible to compare this January to previous Januaries, which provides information about how the cycle is changing at specific points in that cycle.
The answer is that there is no benefit in the majority of cases. Just because you can digitize something doesn't you must.
The cam shaft is extremely simple and extremely unlikely to fail. It just works. It only has two failure modes, one internal one external.
Internal: structural failure, which for those up to speed on their material properties, is extremely unlikely. Any structural failure root cause is more likely to be the result of a bad batch of material than anything else.
External: rotation failure. This isn't a failure of the shaft, but a failure of another component of the engine that is failing to drive it's rotation.
It is because of this simple reliability that there has been little reason to reengineer or replace the camshaft.
By contrast digital timers have much more complexity and points of failure. Now I do believe that reliability is ultimately an engineering problem, and one that will be solved in time. And there may come a point when the pros of digital cam replacement carry a net benefit. But that time is not now. The primary scenarios I can envision (currently) where the digital replacement would be preferable would be things like extremely vibration sensitivity, or where physical space requirements are too tight to allow a cam shaft, or possibly where the reduced need for lubrication (though if you have a need to avoid lubrication you probably want to avoid internal combustion and its myriad moving parts entirely).
Firstly, as a random person in front of a computer, you are unlikely to have verified much, if any, of the scientific knowledge you take for granted. So you exercise some level of belief already, simply because it is physically impossible for you to personally verify every single aspect of every single science personally.
Yes there is some degree of danger of falling into the Argument from Authority fallacy. But remember, fallacies are warnings, not factual statements of being (ie, the presence of a fallacy doesn't mean the statement is automatically false, only that it could be false, and you should examine the statement being made closely).
But even so, this belief is rational. It's based on the confidence that you could if you chose choose any one experiment and replicate it, given enough funding/time/resources. It's a rational belief based on prior work and prior verifications, and is the reason the danger of an authority fallacy is increasingly negligible for many areas of well established science (this includes global warming by the way).
Now religion on the other hand, true religion, is totally unverifiable. You believe something because a guy in a funny robe told you to. Or because a book told you to.
Once again, the spectre of the Authority fallacy rears its head. and this time you cannot dispel it by performing any verification yourself. You cannot pierce the veil of death verify that there is a heaven or hell on the other side n the same way we can verify and demonstrate evolution. You cannot prove that a bush talked to Moses in the same way we can compile thousands of data points over a tremendous time period and show the warming of the planet. Religious statements are staements of faith, and such -cannot- be verified in any way. That's why it's called Faith.
So while yes, there is a degree of belief involved in science, the word itself really is a limitation of language, "belief" being the best word to use, yet still not quite right. therefore the concepts of science requires a nuanced and intelligent concept of what is being discussed, a concept that goes beyond the mere literal meaning of the words...a literal meaning that folks like you exploit in order to deceive and portray science as just another religion.
if you want to get all philosophical here, then can take turns one upping each other with the different stages in the life of the material: the blocks were quarried 8k years ago from a rock formation exposed 30k years ago, the upthrust from tectonic activity and plate collisions 700k years ago, driving to the surface material that formed 20 million years ago in the bowls of the earth....toss in another cycle of tectonic submergence/melting/upthrust here even if want, which allowed the substances that are now ignacious rock (I don't know...I just remember the name) but were originally sedimentary....or keep going further, with the accretion of galactic material into a disk and eventually a planet....the date it was fused and ejected by a supernovae...etc.
or we can just say the blocks are ~8k years old since that when they were quarried, and not engage in a pedantic argument completely beside the original point.:P
Ive seen the occasional mix up due to the presence (or lack) of umlauts and other funky special characters in place names, as well as the occasional poor translation between languages with different alphabets (or no alphabet in the case of Japanese/Chinese).
(note that this is access tax, not tax on sales over the internet)
It would depend what the tax was for. If the tax was similar to that levied on phone lines to help fund the rural build out, then it is completely reasonable. if the tax is one meant (or abused) to prevent or discriminate access, then not so much.
the four possibilities are: a) true positive: we detected it AND its a real result b) false positive: we detected it, but it's because of some yet unnoticed flaw c) true negative: we failed to detect it, and it's because it doesn't exist d) false negative: we failed to detect it, but it's because our detector is insufficient to the task
They're fairly sure its A and not B, but further looking will help refine the uncertainty. but even if they failed to detect it (c or d) wouldn't be useless. again, with engineering and scientific analysis they can reasonably rule out D (or say we need something bigger to rule out b and d), and then at that point if C is the result, we've still learned something (something that means a whole host of new questions...)
but the point is, if you never look in the first place you have no change of finding anything out at all, so you must look. and even b and d results would still tell us something about the nature of what we were looking for.
I actually pushed a lady's car into a gas station yesterday on way home from work for that exact reason.
she was I a PT Cruiser, and the engine just started revving and trying to go, overpowering her brakes even she said.. luckily, she did have the presence of mind to shift into neutral until she could stop, and then shut off the engine. she even demonstrated for me, and sure enough, soon as she started the car the throttle went to max.
she had stopped about 100' from an intersection, and there was a gas station just other side on corner, so pushed her across so at least she could get out, get a drink, whatever, safely rather than in the street (and of course, no longer blocking street too).
but now these electronic accelerators are common now (my car has one too, much as I'd prefer it didn't), and I hope they're teaching kids learning to drive what to do if one fails like that. older folks like the one yesterday though, they often don't know that they even have them, and what to do if it happens. like said, she was lucky she did; barreling into that major intersection would have been pretty bad.
I think rather its because theyre making computer controlled auto transmissions better by having the computer optimize for efficiency over power.
for the longest time a well driven stick was more efficient than an auto...if you drove for economy. if you drove for burning rubber off the start, well, then you killed your own economy.
so what do you do if you suddenly lose brake fluid pressure while traveling downhill on something like I-29 between Nashville and Chatanooga, as happened to me once?
that's what that brake handle is for. its a physical link. it will slow the car (unless you foolishly keep your foot on the gas). and if you yank on it really hard, it will throw the car into a skid (but don't do that!)
it is an emergency brake. its also a parking brake. it can serve both functions.
needed a rental while car was in the shop. did usual thing where pick the smallest thing possible online, and as usual, it was out of stock by time got there, so get free upgrade. turned out, they were out of everything but trucks. ended up with a 2015 Ram Big Horn for price of tiny Kia.
at first I couldn't even find the gear shift. nothing on the steering column. nothing in the middle of the floor.
then I saw it. a small rotary knob on the dash below the radio.
now sure, there's been various simplified and electronic and hybrid transmissions for awhile (like my Hyundai, with the subsection on the side for manual gear selection). but that really threw me, and now I knew what my grandfather must have felt like when he first encounted a hybrid transmission ("it cant be a manual clutch without a clutch pedal").
anyway. nice truck...but I still cant say I was impressed by the gear shift. not a fan.
but at least it was bigger and far away from the air control knobs...that could have gotten interesting.
(not a gear head; if I misstated any terms, sue me. the meaning should be clear)
oh look, ignorance modded insightful by ignorant mods.
its like when people say "but what about white history month"... completely oblivious to the fact that the entire point is that white history month is better known as "the other 11 months of the year".
ie, more of the same "im against political correctness because I want to be a bigoted prick"
sock puppeting yourself and modding down dissent doesn't make you right either. your name is still appropriate. and smoking DOES increase the risk of lung disease. that isn't a religion but established fact.
the people who say the things you just said are the ones who don't truly understand science.
if I have a giant mountain of proof for A on one hand, then before I will replace A with B, B needs to come up with an even bigger mountain of proof.
is it possible that we will at some point overturn evolution, gravity,global warming, or any other long held theories? yes.
is it at all likely? no.
its 'possible' in the sense that winning the powerball is possible. its an extremely low probability event, and it it only gets lower the more we dig into these topics.
are they 100% settled? no. but they are 99.999999% settled.
there is no serious evidence against these theories, every new bit of research instead only serves to further cement them. which I why they are "settled" and no one seriously questions them other than cranks and those who don't actually understand science.
no different from the small population of woman identified in Africa who are effectively immune to HIV.
that however doesn't make HIV research a religion any more than the small group of smoking related lung disease immunes dismantle the link between smoking and lung disease, and allow it to be called a religion.
Slashdot Mirror
this post needs modded up
so your expert is the writer of Jurassic Park?
Hate to point it out to ya...but he's not a climate scientist.
and Goddard is also a crank.
don't get me wrong, State of Fear was an entertaining story.
but its just that: a story.
the actual science and reality is far divorced from his book.
no that's not what it meant.
that 38% number is being taken out of context and distorted.
to explain it further, read this: https://www.washingtonpost.com...
So what’s up with this 38 percent figure, and does it really undermine the idea that 2014 was the hottest year on record?
The figure comes from slide 5 of the PowerPoint presentation mentioned above, where NASA scientists noted that there was a 38 percent chance that 2014 was the hottest year, but only a 23 percent chance that the honor goes to the next contender, 2010, and a 17 percent chance that it goes to 2005.
The same slide shows that NOAA’s scientists were even more confident in the 2014 record, ranking it as having a 48 percent probability, compared with only an 18 percent chance for 2010 and a 13 percent chance for 2005. Here is the slide: http://img.washingtonpost.com/...
so, as usual, scientists said something scientific, reasonably assuming a scientific understanding of statistics on the part of the listeners (it being intended for an audience familiar with the subject), and instead a group of ignorant people heard it, interpreted it wrongly, and ran with it, spreading misinformation in the process.
the only obvious logic fault is your own.
you linked to an article pointing out a local record, not a global average record.
its not just "1 month". its a specific month in a known cycle, being compared to past months in the same place in the same cycle. for reference, the earth orbits the sun, and the earth is tilted. this created a cycle we call "seasons". this makes it possible to compare this January to previous Januaries, which provides information about how the cycle is changing at specific points in that cycle.
Ah.
The "I slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night" stance.
The answer is that there is no benefit in the majority of cases.
Just because you can digitize something doesn't you must.
The cam shaft is extremely simple and extremely unlikely to fail. It just works. It only has two failure modes, one internal one external.
Internal: structural failure, which for those up to speed on their material properties, is extremely unlikely. Any structural failure root cause is more likely to be the result of a bad batch of material than anything else.
External: rotation failure. This isn't a failure of the shaft, but a failure of another component of the engine that is failing to drive it's rotation.
It is because of this simple reliability that there has been little reason to reengineer or replace the camshaft.
By contrast digital timers have much more complexity and points of failure. Now I do believe that reliability is ultimately an engineering problem, and one that will be solved in time. And there may come a point when the pros of digital cam replacement carry a net benefit. But that time is not now. The primary scenarios I can envision (currently) where the digital replacement would be preferable would be things like extremely vibration sensitivity, or where physical space requirements are too tight to allow a cam shaft, or possibly where the reduced need for lubrication (though if you have a need to avoid lubrication you probably want to avoid internal combustion and its myriad moving parts entirely).
Firstly, as a random person in front of a computer, you are unlikely to have verified much, if any, of the scientific knowledge you take for granted.
So you exercise some level of belief already, simply because it is physically impossible for you to personally verify every single aspect of every single science personally.
Yes there is some degree of danger of falling into the Argument from Authority fallacy. But remember, fallacies are warnings, not factual statements of being (ie, the presence of a fallacy doesn't mean the statement is automatically false, only that it could be false, and you should examine the statement being made closely).
But even so, this belief is rational. It's based on the confidence that you could if you chose choose any one experiment and replicate it, given enough funding/time/resources. It's a rational belief based on prior work and prior verifications, and is the reason the danger of an authority fallacy is increasingly negligible for many areas of well established science (this includes global warming by the way).
Now religion on the other hand, true religion, is totally unverifiable.
You believe something because a guy in a funny robe told you to.
Or because a book told you to.
Once again, the spectre of the Authority fallacy rears its head.
and this time you cannot dispel it by performing any verification yourself.
You cannot pierce the veil of death verify that there is a heaven or hell on the other side n the same way we can verify and demonstrate evolution.
You cannot prove that a bush talked to Moses in the same way we can compile thousands of data points over a tremendous time period and show the warming of the planet.
Religious statements are staements of faith, and such -cannot- be verified in any way.
That's why it's called Faith.
So while yes, there is a degree of belief involved in science, the word itself really is a limitation of language, "belief" being the best word to use, yet still not quite right. therefore the concepts of science requires a nuanced and intelligent concept of what is being discussed, a concept that goes beyond the mere literal meaning of the words...a literal meaning that folks like you exploit in order to deceive and portray science as just another religion.
if you want to get all philosophical here, then can take turns one upping each other with the different stages in the life of the material:
the blocks were quarried 8k years ago from a rock formation exposed 30k years ago, the upthrust from tectonic activity and plate collisions 700k years ago, driving to the surface material that formed 20 million years ago in the bowls of the earth....toss in another cycle of tectonic submergence/melting/upthrust here even if want, which allowed the substances that are now ignacious rock (I don't know...I just remember the name) but were originally sedimentary....or keep going further, with the accretion of galactic material into a disk and eventually a planet....the date it was fused and ejected by a supernovae...etc.
or we can just say the blocks are ~8k years old since that when they were quarried, and not engage in a pedantic argument completely beside the original point. :P
there's a bit of a difference between 8k year old rocks stacked on each other, and a manufactured substance.
Ive seen the occasional mix up due to the presence (or lack) of umlauts and other funky special characters in place names, as well as the occasional poor translation between languages with different alphabets (or no alphabet in the case of Japanese/Chinese).
(note that this is access tax, not tax on sales over the internet)
It would depend what the tax was for.
If the tax was similar to that levied on phone lines to help fund the rural build out, then it is completely reasonable.
if the tax is one meant (or abused) to prevent or discriminate access, then not so much.
confirmation of an expected result is not non-important.
it may be boring, as a result that tosses all of physics into question is much more interesting...
but confirmation of a prediction of a foundational theory is anything but non-important.
the four possibilities are:
a) true positive: we detected it AND its a real result
b) false positive: we detected it, but it's because of some yet unnoticed flaw
c) true negative: we failed to detect it, and it's because it doesn't exist
d) false negative: we failed to detect it, but it's because our detector is insufficient to the task
They're fairly sure its A and not B, but further looking will help refine the uncertainty.
but even if they failed to detect it (c or d) wouldn't be useless. again, with engineering and scientific analysis they can reasonably rule out D (or say we need something bigger to rule out b and d), and then at that point if C is the result, we've still learned something (something that means a whole host of new questions...)
but the point is, if you never look in the first place you have no change of finding anything out at all, so you must look.
and even b and d results would still tell us something about the nature of what we were looking for.
so no, it was never useless.
I actually pushed a lady's car into a gas station yesterday on way home from work for that exact reason.
she was I a PT Cruiser, and the engine just started revving and trying to go, overpowering her brakes even she said..
luckily, she did have the presence of mind to shift into neutral until she could stop, and then shut off the engine.
she even demonstrated for me, and sure enough, soon as she started the car the throttle went to max.
she had stopped about 100' from an intersection, and there was a gas station just other side on corner, so pushed her across so at least she could get out, get a drink, whatever, safely rather than in the street (and of course, no longer blocking street too).
but now these electronic accelerators are common now (my car has one too, much as I'd prefer it didn't), and I hope they're teaching kids learning to drive what to do if one fails like that. older folks like the one yesterday though, they often don't know that they even have them, and what to do if it happens. like said, she was lucky she did; barreling into that major intersection would have been pretty bad.
I think rather its because theyre making computer controlled auto transmissions better by having the computer optimize for efficiency over power.
for the longest time a well driven stick was more efficient than an auto...if you drove for economy. if you drove for burning rubber off the start, well, then you killed your own economy.
so what do you do if you suddenly lose brake fluid pressure while traveling downhill on something like I-29 between Nashville and Chatanooga, as happened to me once?
that's what that brake handle is for.
its a physical link.
it will slow the car (unless you foolishly keep your foot on the gas).
and if you yank on it really hard, it will throw the car into a skid (but don't do that!)
it is an emergency brake.
its also a parking brake.
it can serve both functions.
needed a rental while car was in the shop.
did usual thing where pick the smallest thing possible online, and as usual, it was out of stock by time got there, so get free upgrade.
turned out, they were out of everything but trucks.
ended up with a 2015 Ram Big Horn for price of tiny Kia.
at first I couldn't even find the gear shift.
nothing on the steering column.
nothing in the middle of the floor.
then I saw it.
a small rotary knob on the dash below the radio.
now sure, there's been various simplified and electronic and hybrid transmissions for awhile (like my Hyundai, with the subsection on the side for manual gear selection). but that really threw me, and now I knew what my grandfather must have felt like when he first encounted a hybrid transmission ("it cant be a manual clutch without a clutch pedal").
anyway. nice truck...but I still cant say I was impressed by the gear shift.
not a fan.
but at least it was bigger and far away from the air control knobs...that could have gotten interesting.
(not a gear head; if I misstated any terms, sue me. the meaning should be clear)
oh look, ignorance modded insightful by ignorant mods.
its like when people say "but what about white history month" ... completely oblivious to the fact that the entire point is that white history month is better known as "the other 11 months of the year".
ie, more of the same "im against political correctness because I want to be a bigoted prick"
once again the king of strawmen has misrepresented the issue.
dust is the biggest holdback to progression. that's what theyre grinding/hacking.
sock puppeting yourself and modding down dissent doesn't make you right either.
your name is still appropriate.
and smoking DOES increase the risk of lung disease.
that isn't a religion but established fact.
the people who say the things you just said are the ones who don't truly understand science.
if I have a giant mountain of proof for A on one hand, then before I will replace A with B, B needs to come up with an even bigger mountain of proof.
is it possible that we will at some point overturn evolution, gravity,global warming, or any other long held theories?
yes.
is it at all likely?
no.
its 'possible' in the sense that winning the powerball is possible.
its an extremely low probability event, and it it only gets lower the more we dig into these topics.
are they 100% settled?
no. but they are 99.999999% settled.
there is no serious evidence against these theories, every new bit of research instead only serves to further cement them.
which I why they are "settled" and no one seriously questions them other than cranks and those who don't actually understand science.
no different from the small population of woman identified in Africa who are effectively immune to HIV.
that however doesn't make HIV research a religion any more than the small group of smoking related lung disease immunes dismantle the link between smoking and lung disease, and allow it to be called a religion.
your comment is completely idiotic.
you are being willfully ignorant of what "the science is settled" means and refers to.
your statement is an ignorant and disingenuous as response as those who respond to "black lives matter" with "all lives matter".