Actually, as a climate skeptic, I've been saying for years that we should all focus on innovative nuclear technologies. Fossil fuels are dirty, finite and expensive. Cheap, safe & clean nuclear energy is something that could benefit everybody, regardless of beliefs. I don't understand why global warming believers aren't pushing super hard for this.
It's even stranger when you consider that whilst nuclear is both "low carbon" and "renewable" much of what is pushed dosn't meet those criteria at all. Indeed plenty of it appears to be worst, including by "warmist" metrics, than doing nothing!
Meanwhile, 80 billion is spent on global warming programs
What effect will this money have on "carbon" emissions anyway?
and fusion programs get their funding cut.
Nobody has yet managed to build a working fusion generating plant. In contrast there are "off the shelf" uranium (or plutonium) fission designs available.
If a climatologist and a mathematician disagree on the math used in a climate paper, who is the expert?
That is very much the crux of the matter. In order to possibly be meaningful "climate science" must also follow the rules of many other sciences. They form a foundation to it. In the same way that biology must be consistent with both chemistry and physics.
Given that there's remarkably little proof that this is not caused by humans, wouldn't it be better to follow the path that would avoid a catastrophe in the event that the models are close and it is human caused.
Exactly what path is that? There are plenty of ideas which have the potyential to CAUSE a catastrophe. Even ignoring unexpected consequences. Plenty of supposedly "green" methods of generating electrity turn out to have similar, even larger, "carbon footprints" than burning fossil fuels to boil water. With an existing technology which is "low carbon" dismissed by "envronmentalists". This sounds like the so called "precautionary principle". Where "precautionary", along with "renewable" and "sustainable" has it's definition twisted in the sorts of strange ways associated with political extremism.
OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record.
Claiming consensus (or near consensus) isn't "science" anyway. It's "politics" or possibly "religion".
Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.)
Since they are not "climate scientists" their opinion dosn't count here. Even if their skepticism were to come from either their own specialty (which would also include chemists, geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians, statisticians, computer scientists, etc.) or their understanding of "scientific method.
and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
But would any "true climate scientist" not believe in CAGW? Or is there a "No True Scotsman" fallacy at work here?
I'm a little bit surprised that Slashdot doesn't have more AGW catastrophism skeptics, to be honest. Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future". Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle.
That would still be a case of "not a climate scientist". The concept of "nobody out side of a group can critique a member's actions, but anyone who might do so wouldn't be allowed to be a member in the first place" isn't that uncommon.
Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes
It's even worst than that. Even models which can "hindcast" have been incapable of forcasting. But few, if any, have been "too cool".
Maybe at some point after they're all finally out companies, agencies, colleges, etc. will finally realize that using SSN's as their unique identifiers of choice is dangerous.
Using them as identifiers isn't actually that bad. Though it's a bit daft not to be able to come up with employee/student/etc numbers. The problems come trying to use them as AUTHENTICATORS. As well as the daft idea that only you know your own "name"...
Had Germany put all its solar subsidies into nuclear over the last 8 years, they would be on track to have many times more carbon free electrical generation than they will.
An even better idea would be to put all of the "renewable" subsidies into nuclear. Which is more truely described as "renewable" anyway.
Like for example the fact that these download snoopers so far have not shown to have legal status to be enforcing anything. Like the fact that most of these "investigators" don't have anything that qualifies as legal evidence. Like the fact that they have been shown to be breaking the same laws they accuse others of breaking (you can't break the law to enforce the law).
Rather you can only do this if you are an actual "cop". Another Issue is if these people do have the authority to represent the copyright holder they also have the ability to create a "legal torrent".
The conclusion is that chess is not a good measure of intelligence after all. We don't have a good grasp of what intelligence really is, let alone how exactly to measure it. IQ tests have all kinds of problems, not least that the typical IQ test is very narrow.
It's also rather hard to design a test which dosn't require "general knowlage" or which isn't "ethnocentric" in some way.
That's assuming the planes aren't all the same spec, and the probably are (at least at this level since interiors haven't been fitted).
Looks like Boeing currently have five 737 varients in production. Those being the 737-700, 737-700ER, 737-800, 737-900 & 737-900ER. So they may not all be of the same spec.
The closest one looks like's it's cracked almost in two, but the one one land might be salvagable.
Even if there is no obvious damage inspecting them to ensure that they are airworthy might not be worth it financially. There's also the issue of avoiding damage when attempting recovery.
There needs to be a cost for issuing overbroad DMCA takedown notices.
If a court finds out later that a company had no standing or no good reason to make a DMCA claim that resulted in a takedown, there should be statutory damages. Let's start at $10000 per infraction.
Alternativly if the claimant does not represent the copyright holder treat their actions as copyright infringement with statutory damages according to how many times the file could have expected to be accessed whilst it was unavailable. Based on pre "take down" logs. If they did represent the copyright holder then copyright is transfered to the person or company which was the target of the bogus takedown notice.
1. It shouldn't be. That's why we're having this debate. It would be one thing if our government found evidence of something shifty going on... spied to confirm or refute that, and then took action. That's not what they are doing though. They're bugging every world leader, tapping the phones of damned near every citizen, reading our mail... this is Orwellian blanket surveillance which is a far cry from "Spying" This isn't "Spying" it's totalitarianism and it's wrong.
Yet appear to have completly missed ISIS (or whatever they are calling themselves today). About as effective as the DDR knowing about the fall of the Berlin wall.
2. Comparing what the rest of the world does to what the NSA does is a joke. Yes, they spy on us, but they're not intercepting ALL of our phone calls. How many countries do you think have the US presidents phone tapped? I bet it's just one... take a guess who I think that is.
It's been fairly well documented which the beginning of this century.
Plastic has lots of energy (try burning it) and thus could be a food source in and of itself. Thus there could be a bacteria that is eating it.
There isn't one thing called "plastic" anyway. Some types are even intended to be "bio-degradable".
Also the fish that eat it may now have a gut bacteria that will break it down.
Plenty of animals eat all sorts of things that they cannot digest at all. Apparently beta glucose polysaccarides are ment to be good for humans to eat. Even in quanities beyond the ability of gut bacteria to handle. Quite a few plants even rely on their seeds passing through the gut of an animal.
And notice what is missing from my admittedly stupid and simplistic analysis: the cost to run a standby generator, the cost of power storage, or the maintenance cost of the turbine, which I assume like any complex machine requires periodic maintenance.
Note that "standby" in this context means something like "spinning standby" where a power plant will still be consuming a sustantial amount of fuel even when producing no electricity at all. Even gas turbines can't be brought up from "cold" fast enough to cope with variations of the output of wind generators. This is part of the reason that wind can end up having a substantial "carbon footprint".
It fills a different niche so doesn't have to MW for MW. Currently if you need another 2MW you have a choice of bringing another windmill on line or firing up something like a 350MW coal unit. In that case it's shitloads cheaper than coal. If you need another 300MW the coal is going to be vastly cheaper than running a huge pile of windmills. Somewhere in between there is a crossover point where the wind is cheaper than the coal.
The difference is that a steam, gas or water turbine station will produce power when it is required. The output of wind (and solar) is effectivly random and unrelated to demand.
In these days of ever decreasing government revenues taxpayers money should not be wasted trying to save money for the huge multinationals that HAVE all the money. If corporations want to track down pirates it should by on their own dime.
Especially gieb that these multinationals often have complex schemes to avoid paying taxes to ANY government. So it's really individuals and small businesses who will be paying here.
Yeah, we've got this thing with the major ISP (BT) where you can get free wireless at hot spots around the world (FON) by ticking a checkbox that sets aside bandwidth on an open SSID on the router. The IP remains the same, but a claim of responsibility for what other people do with open WiFi gets a "fuck you" to the prosecutor and to hell with the contempt of court.
IIRC it isn't just BT doing this sort of thing. From a technical POV it would be perfectly possible users of the "guest" captive portal to appear to be from a completly different IP address from regular LAN and WLAN users of the router. By putting all that traffic through a VPN connection, rather than the regular NAT.
Of course since corporations can sucker governments into covering their insurance for free (aside from the occasional bribe__political_contribution it does not matter to them.
This is likely to continue to be the case so long as lobbying/bribing costs are less than what the actual "insurance premiums" would be.
"Limited liability" should be replaced by optional liability insurance for corporations.
Or just go back to "basics" where "limited liability" means that the shareholders (owners) have no liability to cover the debts of a failed corporate entity. The original idea was to encourage people in invest in business, with the knowlage that at worst they'd just lose the money they had put in. Protecting either the company or it's officers/executives is a much more modern interpretation.
How about a fine and prison for making a false complaint or warning about a copyright violation?
If they are (or acting on the specific authority of) the copyright holder then that should have the effect of placing the work in question in the public domain. If they are not then treat them as "pirates". Regardless of their complain/warning had any validity at all.
So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?
You'd think so. Except that when members of the public went to look at the USHCN sites only a minority of them were sited correctly. Something far simpler to check than any sort of calibration.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, as a climate skeptic, I've been saying for years that we should all focus on innovative nuclear technologies. Fossil fuels are dirty, finite and expensive. Cheap, safe & clean nuclear energy is something that could benefit everybody, regardless of beliefs. I don't understand why global warming believers aren't pushing super hard for this.
It's even stranger when you consider that whilst nuclear is both "low carbon" and "renewable" much of what is pushed dosn't meet those criteria at all. Indeed plenty of it appears to be worst, including by "warmist" metrics, than doing nothing!
Meanwhile, 80 billion is spent on global warming programs
What effect will this money have on "carbon" emissions anyway?
and fusion programs get their funding cut.
Nobody has yet managed to build a working fusion generating plant. In contrast there are "off the shelf" uranium (or plutonium) fission designs available.
If a climatologist and a mathematician disagree on the math used in a climate paper, who is the expert?
That is very much the crux of the matter.
In order to possibly be meaningful "climate science" must also follow the rules of many other sciences. They form a foundation to it. In the same way that biology must be consistent with both chemistry and physics.
Given that there's remarkably little proof that this is not caused by humans, wouldn't it be better to follow the path that would avoid a catastrophe in the event that the models are close and it is human caused.
Exactly what path is that? There are plenty of ideas which have the potyential to CAUSE a catastrophe. Even ignoring unexpected consequences.
Plenty of supposedly "green" methods of generating electrity turn out to have similar, even larger, "carbon footprints" than burning fossil fuels to boil water. With an existing technology which is "low carbon" dismissed by "envronmentalists".
This sounds like the so called "precautionary principle". Where "precautionary", along with "renewable" and "sustainable" has it's definition twisted in the sorts of strange ways associated with political extremism.
OK, that was funny. But the 97% number is nonsense, just for the record.
Claiming consensus (or near consensus) isn't "science" anyway. It's "politics" or possibly "religion".
Skepticism about AGW catastrophism is rampant among the world's scientists at large (physicists, biologists, etc.)
Since they are not "climate scientists" their opinion dosn't count here. Even if their skepticism were to come from either their own specialty (which would also include chemists, geologists, paleontologists, archeologists, historians, statisticians, computer scientists, etc.) or their understanding of "scientific method.
and many climate scientists have been cautiously coming out of the closet and poking sticks at the shaky foundations as well.
But would any "true climate scientist" not believe in CAGW? Or is there a "No True Scotsman" fallacy at work here?
I'm a little bit surprised that Slashdot doesn't have more AGW catastrophism skeptics, to be honest. Ordinary people hear "supercomputer driven model simulation" and they think "oooh, it must be really accurate and able to predict the future". Anybody who understands statistics and the banal realities of computation knows the good old GIGO principle.
That would still be a case of "not a climate scientist". The concept of "nobody out side of a group can critique a member's actions, but anyone who might do so wouldn't be allowed to be a member in the first place" isn't that uncommon.
Not to mention the reality that nobody has ever successfully predicted long term climate changes
It's even worst than that. Even models which can "hindcast" have been incapable of forcasting. But few, if any, have been "too cool".
Maybe at some point after they're all finally out companies, agencies, colleges, etc. will finally realize that using SSN's as their unique identifiers of choice is dangerous.
Using them as identifiers isn't actually that bad. Though it's a bit daft not to be able to come up with employee/student/etc numbers.
The problems come trying to use them as AUTHENTICATORS. As well as the daft idea that only you know your own "name"...
Wonder if it could be retrofitted to LV-FPV.
Had Germany put all its solar subsidies into nuclear over the last 8 years, they would be on track to have many times more carbon free electrical generation than they will.
An even better idea would be to put all of the "renewable" subsidies into nuclear. Which is more truely described as "renewable" anyway.
The thing about solar is.. it requires huge amounts of space and it's fucking expensive to maintain.
A big problem with both wind and solar is that output can vary effectivly at random.
Like for example the fact that these download snoopers so far have not shown to have legal status to be enforcing anything. Like the fact that most of these "investigators" don't have anything that qualifies as legal evidence. Like the fact that they have been shown to be breaking the same laws they accuse others of breaking (you can't break the law to enforce the law).
Rather you can only do this if you are an actual "cop". Another Issue is if these people do have the authority to represent the copyright holder they also have the ability to create a "legal torrent".
The conclusion is that chess is not a good measure of intelligence after all. We don't have a good grasp of what intelligence really is, let alone how exactly to measure it. IQ tests have all kinds of problems, not least that the typical IQ test is very narrow.
It's also rather hard to design a test which dosn't require "general knowlage" or which isn't "ethnocentric" in some way.
That's assuming the planes aren't all the same spec, and the probably are (at least at this level since interiors haven't been fitted).
Looks like Boeing currently have five 737 varients in production. Those being the 737-700, 737-700ER, 737-800, 737-900 & 737-900ER. So they may not all be of the same spec.
The closest one looks like's it's cracked almost in two, but the one one land might be salvagable.
Even if there is no obvious damage inspecting them to ensure that they are airworthy might not be worth it financially. There's also the issue of avoiding damage when attempting recovery.
I think the cost will be picked up the the railway, and by insurance so no biggie for Boeing except that they will be late in delivering those planes.
Wonder which airline(s) will be waiting longer for their planes.
There needs to be a cost for issuing overbroad DMCA takedown notices.
If a court finds out later that a company had no standing or no good reason to make a DMCA claim that resulted in a takedown, there should be statutory damages. Let's start at $10000 per infraction.
Alternativly if the claimant does not represent the copyright holder treat their actions as copyright infringement with statutory damages according to how many times the file could have expected to be accessed whilst it was unavailable. Based on pre "take down" logs.
If they did represent the copyright holder then copyright is transfered to the person or company which was the target of the bogus takedown notice.
1. It shouldn't be. That's why we're having this debate. It would be one thing if our government found evidence of something shifty going on... spied to confirm or refute that, and then took action. That's not what they are doing though. They're bugging every world leader, tapping the phones of damned near every citizen, reading our mail... this is Orwellian blanket surveillance which is a far cry from "Spying" This isn't "Spying" it's totalitarianism and it's wrong.
Yet appear to have completly missed ISIS (or whatever they are calling themselves today). About as effective as the DDR knowing about the fall of the Berlin wall.
2. Comparing what the rest of the world does to what the NSA does is a joke. Yes, they spy on us, but they're not intercepting ALL of our phone calls. How many countries do you think have the US presidents phone tapped? I bet it's just one... take a guess who I think that is.
It's been fairly well documented which the beginning of this century.
Plastic has lots of energy (try burning it) and thus could be a food source in and of itself. Thus there could be a bacteria that is eating it.
There isn't one thing called "plastic" anyway. Some types are even intended to be "bio-degradable".
Also the fish that eat it may now have a gut bacteria that will break it down.
Plenty of animals eat all sorts of things that they cannot digest at all. Apparently beta glucose polysaccarides are ment to be good for humans to eat. Even in quanities beyond the ability of gut bacteria to handle. Quite a few plants even rely on their seeds passing through the gut of an animal.
So you still need a lot of natural gas plants that can be started up when the wind fails.
More likely these are "idle" rather than "off". So consuming fuel even when producing no electrity.
And notice what is missing from my admittedly stupid and simplistic analysis: the cost to run a standby generator, the cost of power storage, or the maintenance cost of the turbine, which I assume like any complex machine requires periodic maintenance.
Note that "standby" in this context means something like "spinning standby" where a power plant will still be consuming a sustantial amount of fuel even when producing no electricity at all. Even gas turbines can't be brought up from "cold" fast enough to cope with variations of the output of wind generators.
This is part of the reason that wind can end up having a substantial "carbon footprint".
It fills a different niche so doesn't have to MW for MW. Currently if you need another 2MW you have a choice of bringing another windmill on line or firing up something like a 350MW coal unit. In that case it's shitloads cheaper than coal. If you need another 300MW the coal is going to be vastly cheaper than running a huge pile of windmills. Somewhere in between there is a crossover point where the wind is cheaper than the coal.
The difference is that a steam, gas or water turbine station will produce power when it is required. The output of wind (and solar) is effectivly random and unrelated to demand.
In these days of ever decreasing government revenues taxpayers money should not be wasted trying to save money for the huge multinationals that HAVE all the money. If corporations want to track down pirates it should by on their own dime.
Especially gieb that these multinationals often have complex schemes to avoid paying taxes to ANY government. So it's really individuals and small businesses who will be paying here.
Yeah, we've got this thing with the major ISP (BT) where you can get free wireless at hot spots around the world (FON) by ticking a checkbox that sets aside bandwidth on an open SSID on the router. The IP remains the same, but a claim of responsibility for what other people do with open WiFi gets a "fuck you" to the prosecutor and to hell with the contempt of court.
IIRC it isn't just BT doing this sort of thing.
From a technical POV it would be perfectly possible users of the "guest" captive portal to appear to be from a completly different IP address from regular LAN and WLAN users of the router. By putting all that traffic through a VPN connection, rather than the regular NAT.
Of course since corporations can sucker governments into covering their insurance for free (aside from the occasional bribe__political_contribution it does not matter to them.
This is likely to continue to be the case so long as lobbying/bribing costs are less than what the actual "insurance premiums" would be.
"Limited liability" should be replaced by optional liability insurance for corporations.
Or just go back to "basics" where "limited liability" means that the shareholders (owners) have no liability to cover the debts of a failed corporate entity. The original idea was to encourage people in invest in business, with the knowlage that at worst they'd just lose the money they had put in. Protecting either the company or it's officers/executives is a much more modern interpretation.
How about a fine and prison for making a false complaint or warning about a copyright violation?
If they are (or acting on the specific authority of) the copyright holder then that should have the effect of placing the work in question in the public domain.
If they are not then treat them as "pirates". Regardless of their complain/warning had any validity at all.
So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?
You'd think so. Except that when members of the public went to look at the USHCN sites only a minority of them were sited correctly. Something far simpler to check than any sort of calibration.