Governments hate anonymity and payments they can't track, and they are just itching for excuses like "drugs" and "child pornography" to push through regulations to outlaw efforts like bitcoin and tor.
their interest is in getting you to pay more taxes so they can pay less.
No, their interest is getting you to pay more out of your own pocket so they can pay less. There really is little reason why I should have to pay for your excessive consumption of health care, insurance, or government services. You want that stuff? You pay for it.
You think that's a joke, but why not? What is the Chinese government going to do to you? Have you extradited for storing anti-Marxist propaganda? Fine you for copyright violations?
If you look at, for example, the data protection laws here in Germany, the German government can get at my data even more easily than the FBI can get at data in the US. What I'm asking myself is: assuming that any government can look at data within its borders anyway, what's the best place to store my data? Good attributes for such a place are: I'm not living there, I don't want to travel there, and they aren't really on good terms with my government.
I think what the EU representatives are really saying in so many words is: "don't store your data in the US, where European governments have a harder time getting at it, store it in Europe where we can get at it easily (but you can trust us!)".
That's ridiculous. France manages to meet 80% of its energy needs from nuclear. We are nowhere near peak oil, Europe and the US are wealthier than ever before, and if we wanted to, we could easily move most of our energy production to nuclear. The obstacles are political and regulatory, like Germany's knee-jerk abandonment of nuclear energy.
It's correct that we can't meet our growing energy demands with renewables. But to limit energy supply is also a dumb idea.
People really should stop worrying so much about it. We can meet our energy demand for the foreseeable future with nuclear, and nobody can tell what the world is going to be like 50-100 years from now anyway.
Newer research by Füssel, H. (2009) estimated this to be closer to 1.5-2.5C.
AFAIK, Füssel has conducted no research that would allow him to reach that conclusion. Which paper is that supposed to be.
Furthermore, the Greenland ice sheet melting might be a dramatic event, but it is not a "tipping point" by itself (since there is likely little positive feedback). And no matter how warm it gets, it would take more than a thousand years for it to melt.
So now that we understand that we are heading towards tipping points (and have likely already toppled one), are there worrisome tipping points that we might hit at 2C?
Just changing the definition of "tipping point" like you try to do doesn't change the facts: there is no evidence that there are any dramatic or irreversible changes happening within 2C of current temperatures.
Most other nations which can afford to fund basic research have similar provisions - I know this because all of our competitors outside the US have licenses which are equally restrictive (sometimes more so).
You're engaging in circular reasoning: you conclude that other nations must have similar laws because they have similar licenses, but that's your hypothesis, namely that similar laws lead to similar licenses.
It depends on the institution and the researchers involved - ultimately the professors have the most say in this
First you say "most academics are under tremendous pressure to keep anything of potential commercial value closed" and now this.
In fact, it *is* largely up to the professors, anywhere. Even in the US, any academic who has created "computational codes" that are widely used in the community would likely have enough power to push through open sourcing it, no matter what rights the institution has. Because if it's really important code, he can just say "OK, you keep the code and enjoy it; I and my grad students found a company and I'm off to another institution".
Professors choose not to open source for a wide variety of reasons, commercialization only being one of many.
Most academics are under tremendous pressure to keep anything of potential commercial value closed;
Nonsense. There is tons of academic open source. And Bayh-Dole doesn't apply outside the US.
The real reasons for not publishing source in academia are much simpler: it's ugly, people don't want to spend time support messy code, or they think you haven't finished publishing yet. Generally, if you ask, you get the code.
People should perhaps have a look at where open source actually started. In any case, there are reasons not to publish source that aren't nefarious: you haven't written up all the papers yet and don't want to get scooped, you don't want to spend a lot of time answering questions about it, etc. I think most academics really have these tradeoffs under control.
That is not true. That is only a subset of the common usage of tipping point. As the paper states
The term "tipping point" clearly implies a strong, irreversible change by its very imagery. If climate activists start using it in a different sense, then they are being manipulative and dishonest.
All of these are tipping points
If you call these events "tipping points", then we have been hitting "tipping points" constantly for the past 20000 years, so we obviously don't have to worry about them.
Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic climate change.
I.e., even the authors of that rather shoddy paper only say that these "tipping elements" haven't reached their "tipping point" yet, and they "could reach it" under current projects.
And there is little actual science in that paper. They just sat down, drew up a list, and then asked a bunch of their friends what they thought ("expert elicitation").
You can't be hitting "tipping points" like milestones; it doesn't make sense. A "tipping point" is when the global climate changes irreversibly and strongly from one stable state to another. If we had already hit a tipping point towards a warmer climate, we wouldn't have to talk about climate change at all anymore, because it would be getting warmer no matter what we do with CO2 emissions.
Methodological errors include the use of incorrect discounting rates, ignoring technological uncertainties, ignoring the feedback of climate change on growth, and ignoring opportunity costs. And Stern's conclusion that CO2 levels can be stablized at an annual cost of (only) 1% GDP doesn't even make sense.
I'm tempted to say that what will happen is that emissions will be cut through heavy-handed government interference, global warming won't be so bad after the cuts
Merely "cutting" of carbon emissions isn't going to change anything significant, it's just going to delay things by a few years. To stop CO2 growth, all major industrialized nations have to become carbon neutral. The only way to do that with today's technologies is to switch to nuclear on a grand scale. That doesn't require "government interference", it requires less government interference.
You moved the line from 2C (where the original post put the threshold) to 4C. Do you have any evidence or even plausible argument for a tipping point at 2C, as the original post claimed? If not, just admit that there is no evidence.
Wow, so many words, so few facts. FWIW, I actually think we should switch to nuclear as soon as possible. But scientifically and economically illiterate blow-hards like you are dominating the discussion and proposing hare-brained economic schemes that will only prolong the burning of fossil fuels.
Welcome to stage 3 of AGW denial: It's taking place, it's us, but we don't know how bad it is.
That's the scientific method: we don't accept things as fact until they have been convincingly proven through reproducible experiments and logical arguments.
And it's not a question of "how bad it is" (global warming is obviously not very "bad" so far), it's a question of "how bad will it become".
Questions 1 through 3 have been answered at nauseam, so I'll leave you to google that for about 30 seconds
I don't have to "Google it", I've read many of the papers.
All of them pretty much agree though that it is cheaper to mitigate CO2 emissions than to just continue with our current approach.
Even the last IPCC report didn't reach that conclusion. Furthermore, all those studies have methodological errors. And, finally, agreement is irrelevant in science; what matters is sound, logical arguments and reproducible experiments.
Huh? Tipping points at any temperature within a few degrees of current temperatures are pure speculation, and actually quite unlikely given climate history
Slashdot Mirror
Governments hate anonymity and payments they can't track, and they are just itching for excuses like "drugs" and "child pornography" to push through regulations to outlaw efforts like bitcoin and tor.
No, their interest is getting you to pay more out of your own pocket so they can pay less. There really is little reason why I should have to pay for your excessive consumption of health care, insurance, or government services. You want that stuff? You pay for it.
You think that's a joke, but why not? What is the Chinese government going to do to you? Have you extradited for storing anti-Marxist propaganda? Fine you for copyright violations?
If you look at, for example, the data protection laws here in Germany, the German government can get at my data even more easily than the FBI can get at data in the US. What I'm asking myself is: assuming that any government can look at data within its borders anyway, what's the best place to store my data? Good attributes for such a place are: I'm not living there, I don't want to travel there, and they aren't really on good terms with my government.
I think what the EU representatives are really saying in so many words is: "don't store your data in the US, where European governments have a harder time getting at it, store it in Europe where we can get at it easily (but you can trust us!)".
That's ridiculous. France manages to meet 80% of its energy needs from nuclear. We are nowhere near peak oil, Europe and the US are wealthier than ever before, and if we wanted to, we could easily move most of our energy production to nuclear. The obstacles are political and regulatory, like Germany's knee-jerk abandonment of nuclear energy.
It's correct that we can't meet our growing energy demands with renewables. But to limit energy supply is also a dumb idea.
People really should stop worrying so much about it. We can meet our energy demand for the foreseeable future with nuclear, and nobody can tell what the world is going to be like 50-100 years from now anyway.
Does everybody in the world these days have a large stash of naked photos of themselves and strip for their friends of Skype?
AFAIK, Füssel has conducted no research that would allow him to reach that conclusion. Which paper is that supposed to be.
Furthermore, the Greenland ice sheet melting might be a dramatic event, but it is not a "tipping point" by itself (since there is likely little positive feedback). And no matter how warm it gets, it would take more than a thousand years for it to melt.
Just changing the definition of "tipping point" like you try to do doesn't change the facts: there is no evidence that there are any dramatic or irreversible changes happening within 2C of current temperatures.
You're engaging in circular reasoning: you conclude that other nations must have similar laws because they have similar licenses, but that's your hypothesis, namely that similar laws lead to similar licenses.
First you say "most academics are under tremendous pressure to keep anything of potential commercial value closed" and now this.
In fact, it *is* largely up to the professors, anywhere. Even in the US, any academic who has created "computational codes" that are widely used in the community would likely have enough power to push through open sourcing it, no matter what rights the institution has. Because if it's really important code, he can just say "OK, you keep the code and enjoy it; I and my grad students found a company and I'm off to another institution".
Professors choose not to open source for a wide variety of reasons, commercialization only being one of many.
Nonsense. There is tons of academic open source. And Bayh-Dole doesn't apply outside the US.
The real reasons for not publishing source in academia are much simpler: it's ugly, people don't want to spend time support messy code, or they think you haven't finished publishing yet. Generally, if you ask, you get the code.
People should perhaps have a look at where open source actually started. In any case, there are reasons not to publish source that aren't nefarious: you haven't written up all the papers yet and don't want to get scooped, you don't want to spend a lot of time answering questions about it, etc. I think most academics really have these tradeoffs under control.
Your country is no different. Neither is mine. In fact, these laws and punishments are pretty universals.
http://www.zdnet.com/au/cybercrime-bill-passes-senate-set-to-become-law-7000002971/
Ah, the Dutch, so tolerant and open minded.
The term "tipping point" clearly implies a strong, irreversible change by its very imagery. If climate activists start using it in a different sense, then they are being manipulative and dishonest.
If you call these events "tipping points", then we have been hitting "tipping points" constantly for the past 20000 years, so we obviously don't have to worry about them.
Why don't you read what you cite:
I.e., even the authors of that rather shoddy paper only say that these "tipping elements" haven't reached their "tipping point" yet, and they "could reach it" under current projects.
And there is little actual science in that paper. They just sat down, drew up a list, and then asked a bunch of their friends what they thought ("expert elicitation").
You can't be hitting "tipping points" like milestones; it doesn't make sense. A "tipping point" is when the global climate changes irreversibly and strongly from one stable state to another. If we had already hit a tipping point towards a warmer climate, we wouldn't have to talk about climate change at all anymore, because it would be getting warmer no matter what we do with CO2 emissions.
Yes, tipping points and serious impacts are a certainty, but not at 2C.
Come back when you have a rational and coherent argument.
Reading isn't your strong point either: "but scientifically and economically illiterate blow-hards like you are dominating the discussion".
Have a look here, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review
Methodological errors include the use of incorrect discounting rates, ignoring technological uncertainties, ignoring the feedback of climate change on growth, and ignoring opportunity costs. And Stern's conclusion that CO2 levels can be stablized at an annual cost of (only) 1% GDP doesn't even make sense.
But it does. Go look at it.
Merely "cutting" of carbon emissions isn't going to change anything significant, it's just going to delay things by a few years. To stop CO2 growth, all major industrialized nations have to become carbon neutral. The only way to do that with today's technologies is to switch to nuclear on a grand scale. That doesn't require "government interference", it requires less government interference.
You moved the line from 2C (where the original post put the threshold) to 4C. Do you have any evidence or even plausible argument for a tipping point at 2C, as the original post claimed? If not, just admit that there is no evidence.
Wow, so many words, so few facts. FWIW, I actually think we should switch to nuclear as soon as possible. But scientifically and economically illiterate blow-hards like you are dominating the discussion and proposing hare-brained economic schemes that will only prolong the burning of fossil fuels.
That's the scientific method: we don't accept things as fact until they have been convincingly proven through reproducible experiments and logical arguments.
And it's not a question of "how bad it is" (global warming is obviously not very "bad" so far), it's a question of "how bad will it become".
I don't have to "Google it", I've read many of the papers.
Even the last IPCC report didn't reach that conclusion. Furthermore, all those studies have methodological errors. And, finally, agreement is irrelevant in science; what matters is sound, logical arguments and reproducible experiments.
Huh? Tipping points at any temperature within a few degrees of current temperatures are pure speculation, and actually quite unlikely given climate history