"Should you be completely dismissed because you don't have a PhD?...no and to suggest it is irresponsible and idiotic"
Context, man, context. This post is picking apart a rather lengthy, and as it turns out, spurious argument by one of these non-PhDs. So poor, in fact, that you got to wonder if it was made in good faith.
That is the issue in the "climate debate", not qualifications, but good faith. Get this into your head if you haven't already: there are people out there paid to spread noise. Not to "win" the debate, but spread FUD. Look up, say, Steve Milloy or Marc Morano on sourcewatch, they have impressive credentials! Milloy from tobacco, Morano from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They can make up plausible-sounding claims way faster than you can shoot them down, especially if you, as Sparkleby said, lack a PhD in a climate-related field. Even if you do, they win, because creating noise and appearance of controversy was what they aimed for in the first place.
Those two are just the top of the iceberg, one can easily be arguing against AGW in bad faith without having a well-documented history as a ruthless shill. So, how do you propose we defend ourselves from them?
"If Apple and Nokia just hurt each other, they will take it out on consumers"
Yeah, but since I'm not a customer of either, and think they deserve to lose all their customers to other parties, I don't particularly mind that. Come to the light side, we have better cookies anyway.
Apple's multitouch patent is ridiculous, and it's one I don't think they want to license. While Nokia is doing the suing, I think this is a reasonable pre-emptive strike. That patent strangles smartphone competition.
The Norwegian military have stated (in Norwegian media) that they did know about the launch beforehand, but did not want to say too much, to not reveal observational capabilities. My guess is they were not important enough to recieve official warning, but were "allowed" to find out about the launch.
On VG, in the morning, they apparently just let people upload anything. There was one picture of a bat-signal, an another obviously drawn in paint... but the ones making the rounds now appear completely genuine.
> Some companies have no trouble letting you stay in a non-managerial position for as long as you want, or even letting you move back to a technical job after trying out management and deciding you don't like it.
Heh. The founder of a company I worked for, once it became successful, hired a CEO and just kept on writing perl scripts. Still majority shareholder, of course. Luckily, he either wasn't much of a back seat driver, or the CEO didn't mind, because it worked out fine.
Whoosh, where did the goalposts go? First you said carbon emissions weren't reduced, now you have retreated to "it exists in nature, so it can't possibly be bad in any concentration".
It's not really worth arguing about that. You will never be convinced (how often do people change their mind in net discussions anyway?), and any other readers hopefully see through the "required for life, therefore good in any dose" argument on their own.
It seems to me that when a carbon tax is suggested, polluters suddenly like emission trading. When emission trading is suggested, they suddenly like carbon taxes.
If your costs to do business as a carbon producer go up, with some relation at all to how much you pollute, then the system is working. That should be really simple to see.
> Environmentalism is the religion of the 21st century
No it is not. That is simply a bad analogy. It is a political movement, no more, no less.
One funny guy quipped that socialism saved capitalism from itself in the previous century, and environmentalism has to do it in this one. There's some truth to that, but don't miss the point that capitalism is in fact worth saving.
The ones that are part of a cap and trade scheme really do reduce emissions, provided they are enforced at all. There's just no point discussing this. It worked for sulphur, it will work for carbon - the only problem is that GHG emissions have a global effect, so it requires international cooperation to enforce. Unfortunately, international cooperation is a swear word in some circles.
Then there are carbon offsets where you pay people to do something they otherwise wouldn't (such as plant a lot of trees, or replace a machine with a more expensive machine that pollutes less). These are harder to police, and if I had to bet I'd guess they probably aren't as effective as advertised. But they are probably not completely useless either.
Trust me, BGGers hate GW now. Yes, space hulk was a limited run, and hard to get, and that only made people want it more. Then suddenly every rule summary, player aid, scenario, card list, etc. for every single game that had at one point been owned by GW was lost in the black hole of their legal departement. Suddenly people weren't NEARLY as eager to get one of those limited-run space hulk re-releases.
Go in and look on the discussions as well; a sizable number of Space Hulk fans, who were recently triumphing at their old game's meteoric rise, are now practically in tears over people's "vengeful" rating changes.
No, not yet. And Hasbro isn't nearly as bad when it comes to suing, they are mostly bad in the "milk your childhood memories to the last drop and stifle anything new" sense.
I don't play their kind of games much, but I have BIG respect for Fantasy Flight Games for their adoption practices. They buy the games fans still love which no longer fits with the old publisher's business plan. They even seem to make money on it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Should you be completely dismissed because you don't have a PhD?...no and to suggest it is irresponsible and idiotic"
Context, man, context. This post is picking apart a rather lengthy, and as it turns out, spurious argument by one of these non-PhDs. So poor, in fact, that you got to wonder if it was made in good faith.
That is the issue in the "climate debate", not qualifications, but good faith. Get this into your head if you haven't already: there are people out there paid to spread noise. Not to "win" the debate, but spread FUD. Look up, say, Steve Milloy or Marc Morano on sourcewatch, they have impressive credentials! Milloy from tobacco, Morano from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They can make up plausible-sounding claims way faster than you can shoot them down, especially if you, as Sparkleby said, lack a PhD in a climate-related field. Even if you do, they win, because creating noise and appearance of controversy was what they aimed for in the first place.
Those two are just the top of the iceberg, one can easily be arguing against AGW in bad faith without having a well-documented history as a ruthless shill. So, how do you propose we defend ourselves from them?
In the comments section: "Oh, I forgot: for our non-regular commenters, I, sparkleby, am the blogger, and am fully responsible for this blog post."
The golden rule of multi-level marketing: Although friendship cannot be bought, it can still be redeemed for cash.
You should not need someone's permission to use a stinking TTS program.
"If Apple and Nokia just hurt each other, they will take it out on consumers"
Yeah, but since I'm not a customer of either, and think they deserve to lose all their customers to other parties, I don't particularly mind that. Come to the light side, we have better cookies anyway.
... and hope they hurt each other as much as possible.
Apple's multitouch patent is ridiculous, and it's one I don't think they want to license. While Nokia is doing the suing, I think this is a reasonable pre-emptive strike. That patent strangles smartphone competition.
The Norwegian military have stated (in Norwegian media) that they did know about the launch beforehand, but did not want to say too much, to not reveal observational capabilities. My guess is they were not important enough to recieve official warning, but were "allowed" to find out about the launch.
On VG, in the morning, they apparently just let people upload anything. There was one picture of a bat-signal, an another obviously drawn in paint... but the ones making the rounds now appear completely genuine.
> Some companies have no trouble letting you stay in a non-managerial position for as long as you want, or even letting you move back to a technical job after trying out management and deciding you don't like it.
Heh. The founder of a company I worked for, once it became successful, hired a CEO and just kept on writing perl scripts. Still majority shareholder, of course. Luckily, he either wasn't much of a back seat driver, or the CEO didn't mind, because it worked out fine.
The swedish Epilogue server sounds interesting in that sense. I bet permadeath changes the character of an mmorpg rather much.
"[...] and we went back to our real characters."
Interesting choice of words.
That is a simpler explanation, and I like it because illustrates an important political concept (intransitivity of majorities).
But I still wonder where all those pious Pigouvians were in, say, the nineties.
Whoosh, where did the goalposts go? First you said carbon emissions weren't reduced, now you have retreated to "it exists in nature, so it can't possibly be bad in any concentration".
It's not really worth arguing about that. You will never be convinced (how often do people change their mind in net discussions anyway?), and any other readers hopefully see through the "required for life, therefore good in any dose" argument on their own.
It seems to me that when a carbon tax is suggested, polluters suddenly like emission trading. When emission trading is suggested, they suddenly like carbon taxes.
If your costs to do business as a carbon producer go up, with some relation at all to how much you pollute, then the system is working. That should be really simple to see.
> Environmentalism is the religion of the 21st century
No it is not. That is simply a bad analogy. It is a political movement, no more, no less.
One funny guy quipped that socialism saved capitalism from itself in the previous century, and environmentalism has to do it in this one. There's some truth to that, but don't miss the point that capitalism is in fact worth saving.
No, not insightful. Carbon emissions is not a sin, just something that critically needs to be limited.
It's the difference between "wrong" and "bad", a rather important difference in many areas of life.
You have several kind of carbon offsets.
The ones that are part of a cap and trade scheme really do reduce emissions, provided they are enforced at all. There's just no point discussing this. It worked for sulphur, it will work for carbon - the only problem is that GHG emissions have a global effect, so it requires international cooperation to enforce. Unfortunately, international cooperation is a swear word in some circles.
Then there are carbon offsets where you pay people to do something they otherwise wouldn't (such as plant a lot of trees, or replace a machine with a more expensive machine that pollutes less). These are harder to police, and if I had to bet I'd guess they probably aren't as effective as advertised. But they are probably not completely useless either.
Translate.
What fan-suing did TSR engage in? Yes, they were atrociously run, so I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I can't remember anything like this.
WTF, didn't see the egregious mistake: BGG's game ranking is not a sales list! it's based on player ratings.
Trust me, BGGers hate GW now. Yes, space hulk was a limited run, and hard to get, and that only made people want it more. Then suddenly every rule summary, player aid, scenario, card list, etc. for every single game that had at one point been owned by GW was lost in the black hole of their legal departement. Suddenly people weren't NEARLY as eager to get one of those limited-run space hulk re-releases.
List of the things removed in the purge.
Go in and look on the discussions as well; a sizable number of Space Hulk fans, who were recently triumphing at their old game's meteoric rise, are now practically in tears over people's "vengeful" rating changes.
No, not yet. And Hasbro isn't nearly as bad when it comes to suing, they are mostly bad in the "milk your childhood memories to the last drop and stifle anything new" sense.
I don't play their kind of games much, but I have BIG respect for Fantasy Flight Games for their adoption practices. They buy the games fans still love which no longer fits with the old publisher's business plan. They even seem to make money on it.