"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.
Indeed. You just missed the forty years of scientific debate that overturned the 1950s consensus that the Earth was entering a cooling phase. This wasn't something that happened overnight, it was fought tooth and nail for decades.
Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.
One of the common one is, "Wasn't the Earth warmer in the past? Without industrial carbon emissions?" I've seen that trotted out by politicians against climate researchers, as if (a) that were news to them and (b) it had never occurred to them that something other than CO2 could drive climate change. The other favorite on the denialist hit parade is "carbon lagged warming in past warming periods." Again, they say this as if the climate scientists had never considered this, when the very information they're quoting *comes* from climate science.
Or how about this one: "Mars is warming too, and there's no carbon emissions on Mars."
These arguments are mind-boggling simple-minded, and they're all rooted in a simple, implicit proposition: CO2 either explains all warming episodes everywhere over all time, or it explains *none* of them.
Personally, I tend not to use my laptop keyboard much. Instead I put the laptop on a folding stand to raise the monitor height and use an external keyboard and mouse. One reason for this is ergonomics; I get less neck strain and can choose a keyboard I like. But the primary reason is that I wear keyboards out. After about eighteen months or so the keycaps are falling off and the identifying marks on them are a distant memory. That's a little more frequently than I like to change laptops and it's a pain to replace laptop keyboards. I haven't had a laptop keyboard that has stood up to two years of use since IBM was making the T series laptops.
Anyhow, my lightweight folding stand and compact keyboard fit into my laptop case. I hardly ever use the laptop's built-in keyboard, but even so the control key caps are falling off.
A very thoughtful and insightful post. That said, it's *also* true that if somebody can exert control somewhere between the applications and the hardware, you aren't just *vulnerable*, you're wide open.
There is no evidence the solar system is warming. There is plenty of evidence the Earth is warming. There is no evidence that GMO foods *in general* are deleterious to human health, although there may well be specific exceptions. It seems reasonable to assume that the safety of any particular GMO depends on the organism itself and the nature of the modifications made.
I'm pretty liberal, but I have no problem with GMO per se -- at least as far whether they're safe to eat. I think there were some concerns raised twenty years ago that were worth looking into.
I *do* have a problem with enforcement of IP against farmers whose crops were contaminated by GMO cross-pollination, and forbidding poor farmers from saving seed.
I also have concerns about plants bred to produce insecticidal molecules, not because things like BTI are toxic (they aren't to humans), but because the widespread cultivation of these crops might lead to the development of pesticide resistance. An integrated pest management approach which uses such pesticides only as needed is more likely to preserve their usefulness.
It's pretty well established that the severity of the punishment is weakly correlated with deterrence. What matters more is the *probability* of punishment.
Everyone understands this as applied to his *own* behavior. You sail right by the signs threatening an enhanced speeding sign, but if you see a cop car sitting in the breakdown lane you slow right down. But somehow we expect other people to behave differently than we would.
"All" that is needed to get better at deterring crime is to become better at catching criminals.
The issue isn't dissent. The issue is malpractice. The authors rehashed their old papers without crediting the old papers' co-authors, and the peer reviewers tampered with the review process to favor their own or colleagues' papers.
Sure, in the Hadean period 4600+ million years ago the Earth's atmosphere had no free oxygen.
The far distant past is not the issue. The ability of the human race to survive isn't the issue either. The issue is the ability of the society we have built to cope with environmental changes that may occur on the timescale of a single lifetime.
A +2C change would result in a world that looks drastically different than ours is now. But if that change occurred over a thousand years it'd be practically imperceptible to people. The same change over a century would be a major challenge to our economy. How well you adapt depends on how mobile your means of making a living are. If you're an investment banker, it's no problem at all to shift your money out of harm's way. If you're an American rancher, you may find yourself in a "Bottle Imp" scenario. If you're a Bangladeshi subsistence farmer you are SOL.
Here's a clue: the air mass that's breaking all the cold weather records? That air mass is actually unusually *warm* for this time of year. How can that be? Because it's not where it usually is, way up in Canada. At the same time many northern areas are getting record warm temperatures, and California is missing the rain it should be getting this time of year. The overall picture is of a *warm* winter, averaged over the northern hemisphere, but with temperature anomalies all over the place. Which is not in itself *climate*, but the kind of weather event climate models have been predicting for a decade or more now (citation: Easterling, David R., et al. "Climate extremes: observations, modeling, and impacts." Science 289.5487 (2000): 2068-2074.).
Because you have to live in country where someone who believes Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs will have the same say in the running of the country as you?
It's a good question, though. I never thought about the reason plutocracy has made common cause with religious fundamentalism before, but it's apparent that's because science is more difficult to co-opt than public opinion. A world where science is demoted to "just another opinion" looks like level playing field, but it's not, because it forces science to debate on religions terms, namely emotional appeal rather than evidence.
Well, how many people have heard of John Chapman? Almost everybody, but they know him as Johnny Appleseed.
Give Mr. Dobson's legend another 168 years or so to grow. People will still be using Dobsonian telescopes in 2182 AD I am sure, and for as long as there are people with the desires to look into the night sky and to build things themselves last.
Well, start with whether the results agree with common sense. If you close 2/3 of the lanes serving Fort Lee, then traffic coming up Routes 1 and 9 backs up onto the streets of Fort Lee and you get a slight improvement for through traffic coming up I-95. The actions taken were so drastic it doesn't take an expert to predict the consequences -- which is why the "study" was so fishy.
But suppose you have a legitimate need to be absolutely sure what would happen if you did something so boneheaded as close 2/3 of the traffic in a major artery that flows through the streets of a 3 square mile town. Then run your model, and shut down *one* lane for *one* hour to see if your model predicts correctly. Or shut down both lanes for a full day, if the information is absolutely critical to operations (which nobody argues it was). But don't run the experiment for *five* days, when all it is telling you is what common sense and a gas station map could tell you.
Not analogous at all. The point of Fast and Furious was to track the guns and catch the people transferring them to Mexican drug cartels. In principle this is a reasonable, though risky strategy to catch people who couldn't be caught be mere simulations. In practice ATF was too poorly organized to track the guns to the drug cartels and obtain indictments.
The supposed bridge study was statistical in nature and could easily be simulated from data obtained by counting cars.
The hunger tip is an interesting one, worth trying, but you should accustom yourself to fasting first. You don't have to fast entirely, you can limit yourself to 1/4 the calories needed to maintain your weight on a fasting day. Also, you probably shouldn't fast back to back days. Hunger is stress -- like exercise. Moderation and rest are the best training advice.
I'll also give you the advice I gave my daughter going off to college. Problems will arise, you'll have bad days and sometimes bad course. Give yourself every advantage. Start by taking good care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, and sleep. Pace yourself. Cramming is the most inefficient way possible to study, so study in smaller chunks more frequently -- every day in fact. Always keep up or a little ahead of the course to avoid pointless cramming.
You can't remember what doesn't pass through your consciousness, so pay attention, and take notes. You don't have to look at the notes again, but the process of engaging the brain enough to translate a lecture into notes helps fix it there. Also, some people need to move to remember, and note taking, even doodling can help. In extreme cases you might need to play back lectures on your iPod while you walk (many schools make lectures available on video).
Depends on the bulb. I've seen cheap Chinese knock-off that look identical to high quality bulbs (unless you look closely enough to see the lousy build quality) that have unbelievably bad flickering. They were also 1500K or more bluer than claimed on the box.
For me, and many other like me, it boils down to this: How accurate is the science on climate change?
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events. Instead what we see is many groups throwing out different predictions, and when everyone is guessing something different there is inevitably some who are right and some who are wrong. However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change and the fact that the most public predictions have been so diametrically opposite to the results demonstrates a lack of precision.
You have to be more precise. What predictions are you talking about?
No field of science can or should tolerate inaccuracy and imprecision. Until scientists can agree on models that correctly and reliably predict the effects of carbon on climate, the field of climate change study acts more like a religion in that it asks us for faith instead of facts.
This is just silly. Accuracy and precision are two entirely different things, and *every* scientific discipline tolerates imprecision.
This would require models that make precise predictions that are reliably accurate.
Give an example of a precise *climate* prediction, so we know what you're talking about.
Even the ones that do predict well are not consistent, and quite often contain constants that are not understood and certainly weren't predicted.
Your definition of science rules out physics, which is full of arbitrary constants. For example you may remember the equation for gravitational force from high school physics: F = G *m1*m2 / r^2, where G, the universal gravitational constant, is chosen experimentally to make the equation work. It rules out chemistry and materials science because we measure the physical properties of compounds rather than predict them. It rules out electromagnetism because of the empirical factors ( e.g. 8.854187817 x 10^12 farads/m) needed to make Maxwell's equations work.
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"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.
Indeed. You just missed the forty years of scientific debate that overturned the 1950s consensus that the Earth was entering a cooling phase. This wasn't something that happened overnight, it was fought tooth and nail for decades.
Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.
I won't comment on the "fools" part, but I'm definitely not making things up. If you want an example, how about a 12 term US congressman?
Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.
One of the common one is, "Wasn't the Earth warmer in the past? Without industrial carbon emissions?" I've seen that trotted out by politicians against climate researchers, as if (a) that were news to them and (b) it had never occurred to them that something other than CO2 could drive climate change. The other favorite on the denialist hit parade is "carbon lagged warming in past warming periods." Again, they say this as if the climate scientists had never considered this, when the very information they're quoting *comes* from climate science.
Or how about this one: "Mars is warming too, and there's no carbon emissions on Mars."
These arguments are mind-boggling simple-minded, and they're all rooted in a simple, implicit proposition: CO2 either explains all warming episodes everywhere over all time, or it explains *none* of them.
Different model for scaling production. You start by 3D printing a whole mess of 3D printers...
Personally, I tend not to use my laptop keyboard much. Instead I put the laptop on a folding stand to raise the monitor height and use an external keyboard and mouse. One reason for this is ergonomics; I get less neck strain and can choose a keyboard I like. But the primary reason is that I wear keyboards out. After about eighteen months or so the keycaps are falling off and the identifying marks on them are a distant memory. That's a little more frequently than I like to change laptops and it's a pain to replace laptop keyboards. I haven't had a laptop keyboard that has stood up to two years of use since IBM was making the T series laptops.
Anyhow, my lightweight folding stand and compact keyboard fit into my laptop case. I hardly ever use the laptop's built-in keyboard, but even so the control key caps are falling off.
A very thoughtful and insightful post. That said, it's *also* true that if somebody can exert control somewhere between the applications and the hardware, you aren't just *vulnerable*, you're wide open.
The metric system was introduced to Europe by Napoleon, so the standard unit of rock volume should be the "brioche".
There is no evidence the solar system is warming. There is plenty of evidence the Earth is warming. There is no evidence that GMO foods *in general* are deleterious to human health, although there may well be specific exceptions. It seems reasonable to assume that the safety of any particular GMO depends on the organism itself and the nature of the modifications made.
I'm pretty liberal, but I have no problem with GMO per se -- at least as far whether they're safe to eat. I think there were some concerns raised twenty years ago that were worth looking into.
I *do* have a problem with enforcement of IP against farmers whose crops were contaminated by GMO cross-pollination, and forbidding poor farmers from saving seed.
I also have concerns about plants bred to produce insecticidal molecules, not because things like BTI are toxic (they aren't to humans), but because the widespread cultivation of these crops might lead to the development of pesticide resistance. An integrated pest management approach which uses such pesticides only as needed is more likely to preserve their usefulness.
It's pretty well established that the severity of the punishment is weakly correlated with deterrence. What matters more is the *probability* of punishment.
Everyone understands this as applied to his *own* behavior. You sail right by the signs threatening an enhanced speeding sign, but if you see a cop car sitting in the breakdown lane you slow right down. But somehow we expect other people to behave differently than we would.
"All" that is needed to get better at deterring crime is to become better at catching criminals.
The issue isn't dissent. The issue is malpractice. The authors rehashed their old papers without crediting the old papers' co-authors, and the peer reviewers tampered with the review process to favor their own or colleagues' papers.
Unusually low temperatures in some places are offset by unusually high temperatures in others. Why is that so hard to grasp?
Sure, in the Hadean period 4600+ million years ago the Earth's atmosphere had no free oxygen.
The far distant past is not the issue. The ability of the human race to survive isn't the issue either. The issue is the ability of the society we have built to cope with environmental changes that may occur on the timescale of a single lifetime.
A +2C change would result in a world that looks drastically different than ours is now. But if that change occurred over a thousand years it'd be practically imperceptible to people. The same change over a century would be a major challenge to our economy. How well you adapt depends on how mobile your means of making a living are. If you're an investment banker, it's no problem at all to shift your money out of harm's way. If you're an American rancher, you may find yourself in a "Bottle Imp" scenario. If you're a Bangladeshi subsistence farmer you are SOL.
Which says nothing about the *global* climate.
Here's a clue: the air mass that's breaking all the cold weather records? That air mass is actually unusually *warm* for this time of year. How can that be? Because it's not where it usually is, way up in Canada. At the same time many northern areas are getting record warm temperatures, and California is missing the rain it should be getting this time of year. The overall picture is of a *warm* winter, averaged over the northern hemisphere, but with temperature anomalies all over the place. Which is not in itself *climate*, but the kind of weather event climate models have been predicting for a decade or more now (citation: Easterling, David R., et al. "Climate extremes: observations, modeling, and impacts." Science 289.5487 (2000): 2068-2074.).
There are devices of roughly this size and not much more $$ that have still cameras on them.
Why fly such a thing *except* to make someone think they're being photographed? That's harassment, and an invasion of privacy.
Because you have to live in country where someone who believes Adam and Eve rode on dinosaurs will have the same say in the running of the country as you?
It's a good question, though. I never thought about the reason plutocracy has made common cause with religious fundamentalism before, but it's apparent that's because science is more difficult to co-opt than public opinion. A world where science is demoted to "just another opinion" looks like level playing field, but it's not, because it forces science to debate on religions terms, namely emotional appeal rather than evidence.
Isn't that like saying a pilot is distracted by having his HUD turned on?
Depends. Is he using the HUD to monitor his air speed and altitude or is he checking his tweets when he ought to be landing the plane?
Well, how many people have heard of John Chapman? Almost everybody, but they know him as Johnny Appleseed.
Give Mr. Dobson's legend another 168 years or so to grow. People will still be using Dobsonian telescopes in 2182 AD I am sure, and for as long as there are people with the desires to look into the night sky and to build things themselves last.
You don't starve your brain if you reduce calorie intake for one day; the brain switches to ketones and you feel very sharp.
Well, start with whether the results agree with common sense. If you close 2/3 of the lanes serving Fort Lee, then traffic coming up Routes 1 and 9 backs up onto the streets of Fort Lee and you get a slight improvement for through traffic coming up I-95. The actions taken were so drastic it doesn't take an expert to predict the consequences -- which is why the "study" was so fishy.
But suppose you have a legitimate need to be absolutely sure what would happen if you did something so boneheaded as close 2/3 of the traffic in a major artery that flows through the streets of a 3 square mile town. Then run your model, and shut down *one* lane for *one* hour to see if your model predicts correctly. Or shut down both lanes for a full day, if the information is absolutely critical to operations (which nobody argues it was). But don't run the experiment for *five* days, when all it is telling you is what common sense and a gas station map could tell you.
Not analogous at all. The point of Fast and Furious was to track the guns and catch the people transferring them to Mexican drug cartels. In principle this is a reasonable, though risky strategy to catch people who couldn't be caught be mere simulations. In practice ATF was too poorly organized to track the guns to the drug cartels and obtain indictments.
The supposed bridge study was statistical in nature and could easily be simulated from data obtained by counting cars.
The hunger tip is an interesting one, worth trying, but you should accustom yourself to fasting first. You don't have to fast entirely, you can limit yourself to 1/4 the calories needed to maintain your weight on a fasting day. Also, you probably shouldn't fast back to back days. Hunger is stress -- like exercise. Moderation and rest are the best training advice.
This is good advice.
I'll also give you the advice I gave my daughter going off to college. Problems will arise, you'll have bad days and sometimes bad course. Give yourself every advantage. Start by taking good care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, and sleep. Pace yourself. Cramming is the most inefficient way possible to study, so study in smaller chunks more frequently -- every day in fact. Always keep up or a little ahead of the course to avoid pointless cramming.
You can't remember what doesn't pass through your consciousness, so pay attention, and take notes. You don't have to look at the notes again, but the process of engaging the brain enough to translate a lecture into notes helps fix it there. Also, some people need to move to remember, and note taking, even doodling can help. In extreme cases you might need to play back lectures on your iPod while you walk (many schools make lectures available on video).
Depends on the bulb. I've seen cheap Chinese knock-off that look identical to high quality bulbs (unless you look closely enough to see the lousy build quality) that have unbelievably bad flickering. They were also 1500K or more bluer than claimed on the box.
For me, and many other like me, it boils down to this: How accurate is the science on climate change?
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events. Instead what we see is many groups throwing out different predictions, and when everyone is guessing something different there is inevitably some who are right and some who are wrong. However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change and the fact that the most public predictions have been so diametrically opposite to the results demonstrates a lack of precision.
You have to be more precise. What predictions are you talking about?
No field of science can or should tolerate inaccuracy and imprecision. Until scientists can agree on models that correctly and reliably predict the effects of carbon on climate, the field of climate change study acts more like a religion in that it asks us for faith instead of facts.
This is just silly. Accuracy and precision are two entirely different things, and *every* scientific discipline tolerates imprecision.
This would require models that make precise predictions that are reliably accurate.
Give an example of a precise *climate* prediction, so we know what you're talking about.
Even the ones that do predict well are not consistent, and quite often contain constants that are not understood and certainly weren't predicted.
Your definition of science rules out physics, which is full of arbitrary constants. For example you may remember the equation for gravitational force from high school physics: F = G *m1*m2 / r^2, where G, the universal gravitational constant, is chosen experimentally to make the equation work. It rules out chemistry and materials science because we measure the physical properties of compounds rather than predict them. It rules out electromagnetism because of the empirical factors ( e.g. 8.854187817 x 10^12 farads/m) needed to make Maxwell's equations work.