Nice straw man you've put up there to cut down, too bad no real scientists say that
I wasn't talking about scientists, I was talking about left-wing politicians, voters, and activists.
And it's not at all a "straw man": that's what sustainability means.
The climate changes naturally but not like now, which is all the time I'm going to waste arguing with a closed mind.
The "natural change" would be for another deep glaciation to start very soon. Man-made melting of the polar ice caps is in every way preferable.
a rapid man-made climate change won't leave nature or people time to adapt.
Another statement people like you fabricate out of thin air. If you look at population development and migration from 1900 to 2000, any possible changes from climate change pale in comparison, starting with the fact that the world population quadrupled. And did the doom and gloom people have predicted since Malthus happen? No, of course not. Life expectancy, wealth, health, nutrition, and education have greatly improved globally.
and there is also no evidence of an ice age ever occurring with CO2 at current levels, never mind the levels we are projected to achieve later this century
Good. If we're lucky, we can finally get out of the current ice age. 7 million years is long enough.
There *IS* fossil evidence of rapid sea level rise, and we don't have a solid explanation for exactly how that happened -- meltwater, for example, requires an extraordinary amount of in-place melting (takes a tremendous amount of heat),
That was when large parts of the northern hemisphere were covered in ice. And what happened is that the water had to melt first over a long time, and then get released quickly as some barrier disappeared. There really is no other physically possible explanation. No such meltwater lake exists, nor even topographic features that could produce one given the current ice cover.
and we have the additional fun of punching up CO2 at an unprecedented rate, so we cannot take past events as an upper bound on what we might observe.
We can take basic physics as an upper bound.
And again, I'm not saying that Hansen is right -- I am saying that we don't have a comfortable level of certainty that he's wrong.
Of course we have a comfortable level of certainty. Nobody, not Hansen, not anybody else, has been able to come up with a plausible scenario for rapid sea level rise. Worrying about this is no more rational than worrying about the Archangel Gabriel smiting humanity for its sins (and psychologically, I think climate change is the left wing equivalent of "God is punishing us for our sins").
I'm not normally a fan of exponential curve fits either. Unfortunately, he's a climate scientist, and I'm not
Being a "climate scientist" doesn't mean he is qualified to perform statistical analyses or fit curves. That's one of the problems with a lot of climatologists: they know stuff about climate history and maybe some physics, but they are way out of their depth on making actual predictions, risk analyses, or policy recommendations. In different words, when it comes to these issues, Hansen is effectively a layman.
Even if that event was certainly due to a meltwater pulse, that is not in itself proof that a similarly rapid glacial slide cannot occur now,
There is also no evidence that the Archangel Gabriel won't descend from the clouds tomorrow and smite all the unbelievers. So what?
An exponential fit is aggressive,
It's not "aggressive", it's physically and statistically unjustified and unsupported. It is unscientific FUD.
but do you have a proof of impossibility that does not rely on bluster?
I don't have to provide "proof of impossibility". When people make fits to data to make predictions, they need to provide the evidence that their fits are justified. Hansen hasn't done that, so the only thing his statements prove is his deficiencies as a scientist.
And if you use "proof of impossibility" as your standard, then prove that it's impossible that we rapidly descend into another glaciation event. Heck, that has happened about a hundred times before.
We don't know this with the certainty that we'd like,
Yes, "we" do.
In the case of Greenland, there's fossil/isotopic evidence of very rapid sea level rise in the past (multiple meters per century),
Yes, there has been a rapid pulse in the past; that was likely due to the release of a basin of water or an ice bridge, not regular melting. There is no structure in existence on earth that can generate anything similar.
Here is a history of sea levels over the past 20000 years:
Fitting an exponential curve and then extrapolating doubling times and making dire predictions is sheer idiocy. The only thing that link shows (again) is that Hansen is completely incompetent.
Global sea level rise won't be very abrupt. What is abrupt is flooded cities because a single storm (you have several to pick last months, no need to go back to Katrina), or most crops in a region wasted because a heavy rain or hailstorms
That's utter nonsense too. Storms and bad harvests happen all the time. If climate change has any effect at all, it will be to change their frequencies slightly. There is nothing "abrupt" about it.
By then the alternative places to where they could move will be already taken out, either flooded with people or just owned by speculators.
Yeah, like the feudal lords of a few centuries ago owned all the land and they are still in power, right?
Thanks for showing again that left wingers are just as confused about history and science as right wingers.
Right. Back in the real world, "bad centuries from now" is not the same as "good." At least act like you have some relation with reality.
In what way is it "bad" if centuries from now the coastlines are a bit different? They are different now from what they were centuries ago, and you don't even know it.
Are you simply not listening? It would take centuries for the Greenland ice to melt. On that time scale, people wouldn't even be aware of the changing coastlines, they'd simply slowly move around as conditions change, as they always have.
Before Greenland becomes arable, you should be able to figure what yo do with the hundreds of millons of people that will be displaced as the countries/cities they live today
Even in the worst case, it would take centuries for the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps to melt. People migrate so much faster than that that nobody would even notice even the most rapid sea level rise.
You know, big cities and fertile lands usually are close to rivers and coasts.
Yes, and there will continue to be rivers, coasts, and fertile deltas, just like there have been for the past 10000 years during the enormous sea level rise we have experienced so far. Those aren't static features in the landscape, they are dynamic and just adapt to whatever the sea level is. (Ditto for coral islands.)
And if that is not enough, think in the lost crops all around the world because the weather will not be as stable, and much more extreme, as it used to be.
The climate hasn't been stable in many millions of years. We're on a roller coaster ride between glaciations and interglacial periods, with frequent spikes and dips. The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism; apparently neither creationists nor progressives can cope with the idea that the earth and humanity are constantly changing.
And yet, despite not knowing one of the most elementary concepts in chemistry, you state supposed "facts" and consequences about sustainability, pollution, and health risks:
First, we know for a fact that Oil is not sustainable with the current population. Even if we all recycled plastics Oil vanishes faster than the earth is producing new Oil. Second, we are polluting everything. That pollution has not gotten better recently, but rather worse since we are arguing "Climate" instead of addressing our impact.... It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that coal power is bad for people's health. Both the powdering process for the coal, and the burning of the coal pollute the environment something fierce.
Etc. Etc. At best, you are parroting someone else's arguments, but more likely you simply state your intuitions as fact.
One study found a 33% increase in urogenital birth defects. Significant, but not exactly large, treatable, and probably preventable by taking special precautions with women. Malaria in babies, on the other hand, is extremely serious and likely far more frequent without prevention.
Outside of the Chemistry lab, the use of the term "organic" is very different.
Anybody with a high school education should know the scientific meaning of the term "organic", in addition to the grocery meaning.
If the author does not understand basic communications they should have hired someone to help them before releasing misleading information to the public.
The articles are in Nature, Environmental Science, and Slashdot. Readers in all these forums should know the technical meaning of the term. If you don't, the fault is yours.
This is because assholes like you are of a kind "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts".
Most so-called "facts" used by progressives in support of their policies are, in fact, irrelevant factoids. As such, progressives are no more informed or rational than Christian conservatives.
There have been no serious asteroid impacts in millennia, if not millions of years. That tells you that these events are extremely rare, and calling them a "threat" is just not justified.
If anything, space travel and the ability to steer asteroids raises the risk that humans will try to steer asteroids towards earth and use them as gigantic kinetic bombs (fortunately, very slow moving).
Most people don't know any of the science behind nuclear power, global warming, environmental protection, or race relations. Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, their beliefs about these subjects are based purely on what their favorite political personality tells them. So if you try to justify their position, they start spouting nonsense, and they probably don't remember what their position is if they are on their own to make a choice.
As for the presidential candidates, in practice, they were interchangeable: both Obama and Romney were bent on violating the Constitution, civil liberties, and handing large amounts of money to their buddies and constituents, at the cost of everybody else. We happened to get Obama, and he has delivered on that program "beautifully". Obama's pride and overconfidence makes it even easier for special interest groups to pull his strings than Bush's simplicity.
The MIT network was available to Schwartz. He showed his ID and was allowed inside.
You don't have to "show ID" in order to be on the MIT campus, yet it is private property and you are only there subject to MIT's rules. The wired MIT network is neither open nor available to anybody, and being physically on campus doesn't give you the right to any of MIT's services. Physical presence gives you no more right to access on campus services than it gives you to snatching someone's purse or laptop sitting in their unlocked office.
The Network closet was unlocked and anyone could enter at will. Schwartz did not pick a lock or break anything in order to gain access. He simply opened a door and walked in.
Yes, and you can commit a felony by simply opening and unlocked door.
So the prosecutor took the one valid charge, and added all kinds of bullshit charges to threaten him.
I looked at the indictment (it's online). Swartz clearly met the conditions of all four charges against him, and it was proper for a prosecutor to charge him; that's not only my view, many lawyers who have looked at it believe that and, moreover, so did the grand jury. Whether he was guilty was for a court of law to decide. But it was entirely proper to charge him.
The prosecutors job is to ensure that he is charged for what he did do, not everything imaginable that may fit in order to get a massive punishment.
The prosecutor wasn't going for a "massive punishment", the prosecutor was going for six months in minimum security prison, a reasonable punishment and similar to what Swartz would have received in Europe.
To quote a website I went to get citations from: Salt (table salt): Ingesting inorganic sodium chloride will result in an accumulation of sodium outside the cell and will pull water from the cells into the extracellular space by virtue of its concentration.... Moral of the story: Just because we're naturally tolerant does not mean it isn't harmful to human health in the long run.
The moral of the story is that that your understanding of science is obviously utterly nonexistent and there is no point in talking to you anymore.
The problem is that desperate people can cause cascading failure in the labor market. Look at this from a systemic level and suddenly all of these underpaid people can no longer afford to buy goods and more people lose their jobs since they're no longer needed.
Your view of economics is the equivalent of a flat earther. In fact, if Americans work for less, our products become more competitive globally, and we also end up paying less domestically, making everybody more well off.
"Cascading failure in the labor market" is when people like you want to force employers to pay workers more than they are worth; for a while, they have to live with that, but eventually, the employers either go out of business, or they move their business overseas.
An individual would have a very difficult time running a business without the limited liability and special tax code to benefit them.
Anybody can form a limited liability company. In fact, it's easier for individuals to do this than for corporations.
The only thing that makes running businesses hard for individuals is the myriad of governmental regulations and tax regulations.
It's not tyranny to say that workers should receive compensation from their employer should their job injure them for instance.
And neither is it wrong or surprising when employers decide that hiring employees under these conditions isn't worth the trouble and they take their business elsewhere, as they increasingly do. And there is nothing you can do about it.
That's never going to happen. Microsoft development is run by very wealthy people who have a lot of their ego invested in the software that made them rich. They aren't going to throw that out for anything else, ever, they'll rather sink the ship.
The things that are good about windows 8 (modularity of features and some options for speedy lightweight installs, for example) are not at all apparent to most end users.
If it's not apparent to end users, end users will never give a damn. In fact, that's the main problem with Microsoft products: it's a lot of software engineers realizing their pipe dreams and pushing it out on the world, as opposed to delivering software users actually want. Look at all the crap in the Windows NT kernel, crap that nobody ever uses or needs.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't talking about scientists, I was talking about left-wing politicians, voters, and activists.
And it's not at all a "straw man": that's what sustainability means.
The "natural change" would be for another deep glaciation to start very soon. Man-made melting of the polar ice caps is in every way preferable.
Another statement people like you fabricate out of thin air. If you look at population development and migration from 1900 to 2000, any possible changes from climate change pale in comparison, starting with the fact that the world population quadrupled. And did the doom and gloom people have predicted since Malthus happen? No, of course not. Life expectancy, wealth, health, nutrition, and education have greatly improved globally.
Keep in mind that you do not have to use Facebook's app; there are several third party Facebook apps for Android.
Good. If we're lucky, we can finally get out of the current ice age. 7 million years is long enough.
That was when large parts of the northern hemisphere were covered in ice. And what happened is that the water had to melt first over a long time, and then get released quickly as some barrier disappeared. There really is no other physically possible explanation. No such meltwater lake exists, nor even topographic features that could produce one given the current ice cover.
We can take basic physics as an upper bound.
Of course we have a comfortable level of certainty. Nobody, not Hansen, not anybody else, has been able to come up with a plausible scenario for rapid sea level rise. Worrying about this is no more rational than worrying about the Archangel Gabriel smiting humanity for its sins (and psychologically, I think climate change is the left wing equivalent of "God is punishing us for our sins").
Being a "climate scientist" doesn't mean he is qualified to perform statistical analyses or fit curves. That's one of the problems with a lot of climatologists: they know stuff about climate history and maybe some physics, but they are way out of their depth on making actual predictions, risk analyses, or policy recommendations. In different words, when it comes to these issues, Hansen is effectively a layman.
There is also no evidence that the Archangel Gabriel won't descend from the clouds tomorrow and smite all the unbelievers. So what?
It's not "aggressive", it's physically and statistically unjustified and unsupported. It is unscientific FUD.
I don't have to provide "proof of impossibility". When people make fits to data to make predictions, they need to provide the evidence that their fits are justified. Hansen hasn't done that, so the only thing his statements prove is his deficiencies as a scientist.
And if you use "proof of impossibility" as your standard, then prove that it's impossible that we rapidly descend into another glaciation event. Heck, that has happened about a hundred times before.
Yes, "we" do.
Yes, there has been a rapid pulse in the past; that was likely due to the release of a basin of water or an ice bridge, not regular melting. There is no structure in existence on earth that can generate anything similar.
Here is a history of sea levels over the past 20000 years:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Fitting an exponential curve and then extrapolating doubling times and making dire predictions is sheer idiocy. The only thing that link shows (again) is that Hansen is completely incompetent.
That's utter nonsense too. Storms and bad harvests happen all the time. If climate change has any effect at all, it will be to change their frequencies slightly. There is nothing "abrupt" about it.
Yeah, like the feudal lords of a few centuries ago owned all the land and they are still in power, right?
Thanks for showing again that left wingers are just as confused about history and science as right wingers.
In what way is it "bad" if centuries from now the coastlines are a bit different? They are different now from what they were centuries ago, and you don't even know it.
Are you simply not listening? It would take centuries for the Greenland ice to melt. On that time scale, people wouldn't even be aware of the changing coastlines, they'd simply slowly move around as conditions change, as they always have.
Even in the worst case, it would take centuries for the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps to melt. People migrate so much faster than that that nobody would even notice even the most rapid sea level rise.
Yes, and there will continue to be rivers, coasts, and fertile deltas, just like there have been for the past 10000 years during the enormous sea level rise we have experienced so far. Those aren't static features in the landscape, they are dynamic and just adapt to whatever the sea level is. (Ditto for coral islands.)
The climate hasn't been stable in many millions of years. We're on a roller coaster ride between glaciations and interglacial periods, with frequent spikes and dips. The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism; apparently neither creationists nor progressives can cope with the idea that the earth and humanity are constantly changing.
And yet, despite not knowing one of the most elementary concepts in chemistry, you state supposed "facts" and consequences about sustainability, pollution, and health risks:
Etc. Etc. At best, you are parroting someone else's arguments, but more likely you simply state your intuitions as fact.
One study found a 33% increase in urogenital birth defects. Significant, but not exactly large, treatable, and probably preventable by taking special precautions with women. Malaria in babies, on the other hand, is extremely serious and likely far more frequent without prevention.
Anybody with a high school education should know the scientific meaning of the term "organic", in addition to the grocery meaning.
The articles are in Nature, Environmental Science, and Slashdot. Readers in all these forums should know the technical meaning of the term. If you don't, the fault is yours.
Most so-called "facts" used by progressives in support of their policies are, in fact, irrelevant factoids. As such, progressives are no more informed or rational than Christian conservatives.
There have been no serious asteroid impacts in millennia, if not millions of years. That tells you that these events are extremely rare, and calling them a "threat" is just not justified.
If anything, space travel and the ability to steer asteroids raises the risk that humans will try to steer asteroids towards earth and use them as gigantic kinetic bombs (fortunately, very slow moving).
Most people don't know any of the science behind nuclear power, global warming, environmental protection, or race relations. Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, their beliefs about these subjects are based purely on what their favorite political personality tells them. So if you try to justify their position, they start spouting nonsense, and they probably don't remember what their position is if they are on their own to make a choice.
As for the presidential candidates, in practice, they were interchangeable: both Obama and Romney were bent on violating the Constitution, civil liberties, and handing large amounts of money to their buddies and constituents, at the cost of everybody else. We happened to get Obama, and he has delivered on that program "beautifully". Obama's pride and overconfidence makes it even easier for special interest groups to pull his strings than Bush's simplicity.
You don't have to "show ID" in order to be on the MIT campus, yet it is private property and you are only there subject to MIT's rules. The wired MIT network is neither open nor available to anybody, and being physically on campus doesn't give you the right to any of MIT's services. Physical presence gives you no more right to access on campus services than it gives you to snatching someone's purse or laptop sitting in their unlocked office.
Yes, and you can commit a felony by simply opening and unlocked door.
I looked at the indictment (it's online). Swartz clearly met the conditions of all four charges against him, and it was proper for a prosecutor to charge him; that's not only my view, many lawyers who have looked at it believe that and, moreover, so did the grand jury. Whether he was guilty was for a court of law to decide. But it was entirely proper to charge him.
The prosecutor wasn't going for a "massive punishment", the prosecutor was going for six months in minimum security prison, a reasonable punishment and similar to what Swartz would have received in Europe.
Yes: rage against stupidity--your stupidity.
The moral of the story is that that your understanding of science is obviously utterly nonexistent and there is no point in talking to you anymore.
So you're saying we should simply assume that every news report is false and never have an opinion on anything?
You're a moron.
Your view of economics is the equivalent of a flat earther. In fact, if Americans work for less, our products become more competitive globally, and we also end up paying less domestically, making everybody more well off.
"Cascading failure in the labor market" is when people like you want to force employers to pay workers more than they are worth; for a while, they have to live with that, but eventually, the employers either go out of business, or they move their business overseas.
Anybody can form a limited liability company. In fact, it's easier for individuals to do this than for corporations.
The only thing that makes running businesses hard for individuals is the myriad of governmental regulations and tax regulations.
And neither is it wrong or surprising when employers decide that hiring employees under these conditions isn't worth the trouble and they take their business elsewhere, as they increasingly do. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Xerox? Did I say anything about Xerox?
But are there any Metro apps worth running?
That's never going to happen. Microsoft development is run by very wealthy people who have a lot of their ego invested in the software that made them rich. They aren't going to throw that out for anything else, ever, they'll rather sink the ship.
No, both Microsoft and Apple ripped off and stole that world.
If it's not apparent to end users, end users will never give a damn. In fact, that's the main problem with Microsoft products: it's a lot of software engineers realizing their pipe dreams and pushing it out on the world, as opposed to delivering software users actually want. Look at all the crap in the Windows NT kernel, crap that nobody ever uses or needs.