"So why are about 20% of Israeli citizens non-Jewish (mostly Muslims) if this would break the covenant?"
Because as long as the minority is kept small Israel can continue to be a Jewish state. I said in my post that it's intolarable for the muslim population to be a majority or a significant minority. 20% is not a significant minority.
Finally the Israeli arabs are not really first class citizens. They are subject to different laws,for example there are plenty of jewish only neighborhoods. These types of laws are not tolerated in the US (a true democracy) but they are tolerated in the Israel which is a theo-democracy (yes I made that word up).
"The Palestinians are actually citizens of Jordan or Egypt and are essentially being used as pawns by various Arab leaders' desire to wipe Israel off the map."
It is extrememly significant that the palestenians who fled israel during the war to jordan, syria etc ended up being first class citizens of those countries. Something Israel denies to palestenians under it's rule.
Secondly Israel for all practical purposes is the most powerful nation on the planet. It has hundreds of nuclear weapons and the full backing of the US military. If any country dares to attack Israel the US will turn it into a parking lot overnight. Israel is also not subject to international law because it can and does routinely overly other countries and drop bombs on them. No other nation in the world enjoys that kind of privledge.
Which country in the middle east has enough weapons or a big enough army to wipe Israel off the map? Not even Russia or China can do that.
You are right. That is exactly why it's not being done. Israel is part democracy and part theocracy. Maybe you could call it a theo-democracy. It's the central dillema in israeli politics. Do you want to act like a democracy or do you want to act like a theocracy.
It's something the Israelis will have to figure to figure out for themselves I guess.
Holy crap. MS sells software that cheap to vendors? corporate America is getting royally ripped off by MS and so are the consumers. I feel sorry for any sucker who spends hundreds of dollars for MS software.
Iran is in a tough situation. It's surrounded by enemies. The US is occupying iraq and has hundrteds of thousands of troops there. Bush has labled the entire country evil. Israel is a sworn enemy. relations with Turkey have always been rocky.
I imagine the entire country feels like they are on the brink of destruction. It's can't be a fun place to live when the people who hate you are lined up at the border with massive firepower.
There will never be peace in the middle east. Why?
1) There can only be peace between equals. Israel is much stronger then palestine. Between unequals there can only be surrender. The palestenians are unwilling to surrender.
2) God is telling the israelis that a certain plot of land belongs to them. Once God tells you this all else is moot. There can be no peace as long as god is telling you to build houses on somebody elses property.
3) Neither party wants peace. That ugly fact really is the most important one.
What strikes me most is how this whole issue is so tainted with religion. When one country invades another one eventually they make the subjugated people citizens. This is what china did in tibet, what the Americans did to the indians, what the russians did all over eastern europe.
it's been decades since Israel took over the "disputed terrotories" and yet it has made no move to make any of those peole citizens? Why not? Because Isreal is a jewsish state and introducing millions of muslims into it's population as first class citizens would break a covenant with God. It's not a racial thing, it's OK to have some muslim citizens just not a majority or even a politically significant minority.
IMO Israel should annex the lands it won fair and sqare in a war. It should then do what every other nation in history has done when they won terrotory in war and that is to make them full fledges citizens. I bet that a vast majority of palestenians would love to be first class citizens of a modern democracy.
"No, I'm saying, "hey, that's a great hypothesis, now let's see some controlled tests to demonstrate that the principle is in fact the primary cause in this case.""
OK. Let's ask the US govt to suspend all air traffic for a few days. Let's also do it when we know that there is no sunspot activity or any other activity. Let's also ask the US govt to stop all driving and stop all industry so we can have a controlled experiment. While we are at it we should also make sure that there is no UFO activity too, we would not want to contaminate our pristine experiment with alien activity would we?
"Yes, because unconditionally trusting "authority" is progress. Especially in science."
Do you believe tht Pluto exists? If so why? Have you ever seen it? Have you been there? Why do you believe pluto exists? Is it because you were told so, because you read it in a book, because some scientist swears that it's there even though he has never seen it himself? Is it because there is some instrument someplace which shows some sort of a response to the presense of a so called planet called pluto?
90% of everything you know you accept because somebody in authority told you and you believed it. Whether it's pluto, electrons, or the dirunal effects of contrails.
"Silly me.
You are a very silly person.
"Here I was thinking that people should be trusting their own reason over some "authority""
My reson tell me that if there are three days without contrails then as a direct result there should be a measurable effect on diurnal tempratures. Your logic tells you that any subsequent variations on diurnal tempratures must be due to some other unkown factor such as sunspots.
"That's progress that is."
Yes it is. The ability to transmit information from one person to another and from one generation to another is what separates us from animals. It's the primary reason we progress as a species. I know you never want to believe anything any scienntist tells you because you distain trusting "authority" but lucky for the human species as a whole each generation can learn from the previous without having to learn everything anew. How? By choosing to trust people who have dedicated their lives to ackquiring knowledge and sharing it.
" I am not attributing the temperature variations to anything."
You keep saying more and more stupid things. You attribute them to nothing? Nothing caused them? It just happened on it's own?
"I have been asserting that concluding that contrails are the cause of the temperature variations is premature."
Yes, based on complete ignorance of meteorology. As I keep telling you you are simply burying your head in the sand and saying "it ain't so, I don't believe you".
"Contrails may the simplest explanation, they may even be the most likely explanation, but they are not the only explanation."
Yes, Let's ignore the simplest and most likely explanation. After all it could be alien activity or sunspots too!. You should not trust the scientists who do these experiments and come these conclusions either because if you do that then you are subjugating yourself to some authority. You should instead rely on your own infallible rationality. Who knows more about meteorology you or some stupid scientist who has a PHD and decades of experience? Sure that scientist may have some book learnin but you have real world knowledge!
"Please reread my previous post. I agreed that contrails have some effect on diurnal temperatures; no dispute there. However, I disagreed that contrails were necessarily the primary cause of the diurnal temperature variation as you stated in your first post. That is the premature conclusion."
What an odd statement.
All you are doing here is burying your head in the sand saying "it might be something else, I don't believe you". OK that's your choice I guess but I for one choose th trust meteorologist over some nutcase on slashdot.
You honestly think sunspots are the cause of the diurnal anamoly? You really would look at some weird factor like sunspots rather then the obvious lack of contrails?
"and yet I have been repeatedly stating that concluding the effect was due to contrails is premature. "
Again this is a completely ridiculus position to take. you are acting as if nothing was known about the effects of cloud cover on diurnal tempratures. The insulating effect of cloud cover is not some weird theory or goofy conjecture. It's a well established scientific fact. OK again I challenge you to say it say "nothing at all is known about insulating effects of cloud cover". Or maybe you can say "all we know about the insulating effects of cloud cover is mere hypothesis and should not be treated seriously". Maybe you mean to say "contrials and cloud cover have nothing to do with each other, anything we conjecture about cloud cover does not apply to contrails".
If cloud cover effects diurnal temprature variations and if contrails are a form of cloud cover then contrails effect diurnal temprature variations. It's a simple sylogism man.
Which part of that sylogism are you having problems with?
"All we have are tested hypotheses. "
I think this is what seems be tripping you up. You seem to think that having tested hypotheses some insificant thing akin to taking wild guesses and hoping that we are right.
"The moment you start to think you "know" something for a fact is the moment you blind yourself to the possibility of alternative, and perhaps more suitable, explanations."
Obviously this too is tripping you up. It's OK to acknowledge that you don't know everything but if you put off all action till you have 100% knowledge then you might as well never get out of bed.
What exactly do you propose we do. Pretend we don't know anything? Act as if every scientific hypotheses is a mere conjecture like any other? Pretend that cloud cover has no effect on the atmosphere?
We don't have the ability to stop all air traffic for a few days whenever we want just to take more measurements, we had a chance and we took measurements. We compared those measurements to decades of data used as a baseline. We came to a conclusion based on that data taking into account all that we know (I acknowledge that you think claiming that you know something is bad) about the atmosphere. That's the way science works.
You want to throw away all that and look for an "alternative" explanation. Why? Why not take the most logical and obvious explanation?
You are the second stupidest person on slashdot I have argued with to date. Congratulations.
"Your statement that we definitely affect global climate seems quite premature. "
So far all you have done is use weasel words and avoided saying anything at all. Do me a favor say the phrase 'Humans beings have zero effect on global climate' so I can save that post and show it to other people. I am sure will provide some amusement to my friends.
So which is it? You have two choices.
1) Human beings have zero effect on global climate. 2) human beings have some effect on global climate.
Go ahead, don't be afraid, choose one.
"Correction: they are taken in context with everything else we hypothesize about the atmosphere and physics."
False. Or are you saying that we don't know anything about atmosphere and pysics and that everything we think we know is just a simple hypothesis. We don't know anything but we have a lot of guesses, is that what you are saying.
It sounds like you want KDE to act EXACTLY like windows and not just to have equavalent or similar functionality.
I don't think it will ever happen. It sounds like you will ever be happy with linux, if you want something to act exactly like windows then you should stick with windows.
"Exactly. There is only a statistical probability by accumulated observation. "
Right. And yet you behave every day as if the sun was going to come up tommorow. So does every body else. Despite the fact that you have no DEFINITIVE proof that the sun is going to come up tommorow you have sufficent confidence that it is going to and you live your life taking that into account.
The exact same thing goes for global warming. There is sufficient proof that the earth is getting warmer. There is sufficient proof that human beings effect the global wheater patterns. It's time you started living your life accordingly.
"The measurements are most likely fine for what they are, but using incomplete, uncontrolled data to reach conclusions is erroneous."
The measurements don't stand alone. They are taken in context with everything else we know about the atmosphere and physics. You want to throw it out altogether because it does not fit your ideology. This is not some weird bizaare unknown phenomena. It's simple cloud cover and the effects of cloud cover are well established. Contrails act exectly like cloud cover. Take away contrails and you have less cloud cover which DEFINITAVELY effects diurnal temprature differences.
You want to keep pretending that contrails have no effect on the weather be my guest. There is no sense in talking to the wilfully ignorant. It's one thing to be stupid, or ignorant, but to wilfully bury your head in the sand and keep saying "it's not definitive proof, it's not definitive proof" takes a special kind of fool.
It's obvious to me by now that you are willfully ignoring data that does not suit your rigid ideology.
By insisting on DEFINITIVE statements about the atmosphere you can conveniently ignore any study that does not suit your rigidly made up mind. Guess what there is no DEFINITIVE proof that the sun will come up tommorow.
If there was a study that said there was no such thing as global warming warming though I bet you would not insist on DEFINITIVE proof.
"Saying that the contrail measurements yield a definitive conclusion about a sophisticated sytsem like the weather is premature. One can state there is likely a correlation given our current understanding, but don't go around spouting a causal relationship as fact."
Oh yes we should definately ignore this piece of evidence alltogether. There is no sense in taking any research which goes against your ideology seriously.
"The weather is chaotic. All relevant factors influencing the weather are not known. Therefore, they cannot assert that they have definitively measured the effects of contrails simply because they don't know that the change was a result of some other unobserved factor (lower sunspot activity for the day for instance)."
That's just nonsense. Why would you attribute a change in duirnal tempratures to some unknown and unobserved phenomena when there are well established facts regarding heat retention and cloud cover. The same goes for reflectivity and cloud cover. The lack of contrails reduced cloud cover which made a difference in how much heat was retained. This is not some radical theory, it's a well established principle and we got a rare opportunity to observe it. All of it fits into our models perfectly.
You can ignore the evidence if you want or you can simply blame it on some deep voodoo perfomed by some mysterious as yet unkown force but nobody is going to take you seriously.
BTW saying that we don't know everything about wheather (true) and saying that wheather is a chaotic phenomenon (also true) is not the same as saying we don't know anything about the weather or that it's impossible to do any kind of analysis or come to any kind of conclusions.
The fact is that there are thousands of scientists who study the wheather for a living and have been doing for years. A lot is known. Some aspects of meteorology are chaotic but most of it is pysics. It's complex system but it's not unknowable.
"You consider it a superstition, and that's fine, but science cannot prove it so."
As I said before. The burden of proof is on you to prove that god exists. It's not possible to prove a negative. You really should take a logic course sometime.
" There is no controlled test (contrail experiment), therefore any such assertions are pure conjecture. I find it hard to believe that any true scientist would seriously consider that as solid evidence."
That's not true. There are contrails every day. Measurements are taken every day. There are thousands of points of data during contrail days to establish a baseline. If there is significant deviation from those measurements during days with no contrails then requirements for a control are met.
"There certainly is no question that human activity affects the environment;"
Good. I am glad we agree on that. The original poster stated that human activity did not effect the environment.
" the problem is we don't know how we affect such a complex system."
that's not quite true. We have lots of knowledge abot how actions effect the environment. Yes we don't know everything but we know a lot.
"If a person makes an assertion which presupposes that science will eliminate the belief in God, then it is incumbant upon him to prove that assertion. I believe God to be untestable, and thus, outside the realm of science. What science cannot test, it cannot banish."
Belief in god is superstition. It's no different then belief in santa claus, easter bunny or UFOs. The ideal of science is to discover the truth using the scientific method. This involves setting up theories and then testing them with rigorous experiments and observations that are repeatable.
There are lots of people who believe in goofy stuff and everybody knows you will never get them to stop believing in them. The fact that so many people in the world believe in invisible creatures in the sky is a failure of science, education and mankind in general.
"If you can't falsify the existence of God using imperical evidence, how do you expect science to illumine people and make it disappear?"
The burden of proof lies with those who believe in this fantastic creature. You can't proove a negative.
Slashdot Mirror
"So why are about 20% of Israeli citizens non-Jewish (mostly Muslims) if this would break the covenant?"
Because as long as the minority is kept small Israel can continue to be a Jewish state. I said in my post that it's intolarable for the muslim population to be a majority or a significant minority. 20% is not a significant minority.
Finally the Israeli arabs are not really first class citizens. They are subject to different laws,for example there are plenty of jewish only neighborhoods. These types of laws are not tolerated in the US (a true democracy) but they are tolerated in the Israel which is a theo-democracy (yes I made that word up).
"The Palestinians are actually citizens of Jordan or Egypt and are essentially being used as pawns by various Arab leaders' desire to wipe Israel off the map."
It is extrememly significant that the palestenians who fled israel during the war to jordan, syria etc ended up being first class citizens of those countries. Something Israel denies to palestenians under it's rule.
Secondly Israel for all practical purposes is the most powerful nation on the planet. It has hundreds of nuclear weapons and the full backing of the US military. If any country dares to attack Israel the US will turn it into a parking lot overnight. Israel is also not subject to international law because it can and does routinely overly other countries and drop bombs on them. No other nation in the world enjoys that kind of privledge.
Which country in the middle east has enough weapons or a big enough army to wipe Israel off the map? Not even Russia or China can do that.
Puerto Ricans have never wanted full fledged statehood. At least not a voting majority. They certainly don't mind our "occupation".
The palestenians do object to the israeli occupation though.
You are right. That is exactly why it's not being done. Israel is part democracy and part theocracy. Maybe you could call it a theo-democracy. It's the central dillema in israeli politics. Do you want to act like a democracy or do you want to act like a theocracy.
It's something the Israelis will have to figure to figure out for themselves I guess.
Holy crap. MS sells software that cheap to vendors? corporate America is getting royally ripped off by MS and so are the consumers. I feel sorry for any sucker who spends hundreds of dollars for MS software.
You are still talking about $200.00. For an $800-$1000 system that's a significant percentage.
Iran is in a tough situation. It's surrounded by enemies. The US is occupying iraq and has hundrteds of thousands of troops there. Bush has labled the entire country evil. Israel is a sworn enemy. relations with Turkey have always been rocky.
I imagine the entire country feels like they are on the brink of destruction. It's can't be a fun place to live when the people who hate you are lined up at the border with massive firepower.
"Maybe it's because she's a fool with nothing but her fat mouth and unpopular leftist agendas to ride on."
Nothing but her degrees, books, decades of law practice, and of course a US senatorship. I'd like to have that kind of nothing.
What have you done with your life?
There will never be peace in the middle east. Why?
1) There can only be peace between equals. Israel is much stronger then palestine. Between unequals there can only be surrender. The palestenians are unwilling to surrender.
2) God is telling the israelis that a certain plot of land belongs to them. Once God tells you this all else is moot. There can be no peace as long as god is telling you to build houses on somebody elses property.
3) Neither party wants peace. That ugly fact really is the most important one.
What strikes me most is how this whole issue is so tainted with religion. When one country invades another one eventually they make the subjugated people citizens. This is what china did in tibet, what the Americans did to the indians, what the russians did all over eastern europe.
it's been decades since Israel took over the "disputed terrotories" and yet it has made no move to make any of those peole citizens? Why not? Because Isreal is a jewsish state and introducing millions of muslims into it's population as first class citizens would break a covenant with God. It's not a racial thing, it's OK to have some muslim citizens just not a majority or even a politically significant minority.
IMO Israel should annex the lands it won fair and sqare in a war. It should then do what every other nation in history has done when they won terrotory in war and that is to make them full fledges citizens. I bet that a vast majority of palestenians would love to be first class citizens of a modern democracy.
Ha Ha. I get it. She is a democrat, she wrote a book so therefore it must be gibberish.
Hey where is your book? I bet that's a great one, you obviously have a brilliant sense of humor.
"No, I'm saying, "hey, that's a great hypothesis, now let's see some controlled tests to demonstrate that the principle is in fact the primary cause in this case.""
OK. Let's ask the US govt to suspend all air traffic for a few days. Let's also do it when we know that there is no sunspot activity or any other activity. Let's also ask the US govt to stop all driving and stop all industry so we can have a controlled experiment. While we are at it we should also make sure that there is no UFO activity too, we would not want to contaminate our pristine experiment with alien activity would we?
"Yes, because unconditionally trusting "authority" is progress. Especially in science."
Do you believe tht Pluto exists? If so why? Have you ever seen it? Have you been there? Why do you believe pluto exists? Is it because you were told so, because you read it in a book, because some scientist swears that it's there even though he has never seen it himself? Is it because there is some instrument someplace which shows some sort of a response to the presense of a so called planet called pluto?
90% of everything you know you accept because somebody in authority told you and you believed it. Whether it's pluto, electrons, or the dirunal effects of contrails.
"Silly me.
You are a very silly person.
"Here I was thinking that people should be trusting their own reason over some "authority""
My reson tell me that if there are three days without contrails then as a direct result there should be a measurable effect on diurnal tempratures. Your logic tells you that any subsequent variations on diurnal tempratures must be due to some other unkown factor such as sunspots.
"That's progress that is."
Yes it is. The ability to transmit information from one person to another and from one generation to another is what separates us from animals. It's the primary reason we progress as a species. I know you never want to believe anything any scienntist tells you because you distain trusting "authority" but lucky for the human species as a whole each generation can learn from the previous without having to learn everything anew. How? By choosing to trust people who have dedicated their lives to ackquiring knowledge and sharing it.
" I am not attributing the temperature variations to anything."
You keep saying more and more stupid things. You attribute them to nothing? Nothing caused them? It just happened on it's own?
"I have been asserting that concluding that contrails are the cause of the temperature variations is premature."
Yes, based on complete ignorance of meteorology. As I keep telling you you are simply burying your head in the sand and saying "it ain't so, I don't believe you".
"Contrails may the simplest explanation, they may even be the most likely explanation, but they are not the only explanation."
Yes, Let's ignore the simplest and most likely explanation. After all it could be alien activity or sunspots too!. You should not trust the scientists who do these experiments and come these conclusions either because if you do that then you are subjugating yourself to some authority. You should instead rely on your own infallible rationality. Who knows more about meteorology you or some stupid scientist who has a PHD and decades of experience? Sure that scientist may have some book learnin but you have real world knowledge!
It's also possible that a sue happy company might sue people who hire their ex eployees.
These days professionals don't form unions. They form associations.
Have you ever heard of the AMA? It's union for doctors but it's called the American Medical Association.
Another prominent example is the Bar Association which is a union for lawyers.
There is nothing wrong with banding together to fight for your interests.
"Please reread my previous post. I agreed that contrails have some effect on diurnal temperatures; no dispute there. However, I disagreed that contrails were necessarily the primary cause of the diurnal temperature variation as you stated in your first post. That is the premature conclusion."
What an odd statement.
All you are doing here is burying your head in the sand saying "it might be something else, I don't believe you". OK that's your choice I guess but I for one choose th trust meteorologist over some nutcase on slashdot.
You honestly think sunspots are the cause of the diurnal anamoly? You really would look at some weird factor like sunspots rather then the obvious lack of contrails?
Yea right.
"and yet I have been repeatedly stating that concluding the effect was due to contrails is premature. "
Again this is a completely ridiculus position to take. you are acting as if nothing was known about the effects of cloud cover on diurnal tempratures. The insulating effect of cloud cover is not some weird theory or goofy conjecture. It's a well established scientific fact. OK again I challenge you to say it say "nothing at all is known about insulating effects of cloud cover". Or maybe you can say "all we know about the insulating effects of cloud cover is mere hypothesis and should not be treated seriously". Maybe you mean to say "contrials and cloud cover have nothing to do with each other, anything we conjecture about cloud cover does not apply to contrails".
If cloud cover effects diurnal temprature variations and if contrails are a form of cloud cover then contrails effect diurnal temprature variations. It's a simple sylogism man.
Which part of that sylogism are you having problems with?
"All we have are tested hypotheses. "
I think this is what seems be tripping you up. You seem to think that having tested hypotheses some insificant thing akin to taking wild guesses and hoping that we are right.
"The moment you start to think you "know" something for a fact is the moment you blind yourself to the possibility of alternative, and perhaps more suitable, explanations."
Obviously this too is tripping you up. It's OK to acknowledge that you don't know everything but if you put off all action till you have 100% knowledge then you might as well never get out of bed.
What exactly do you propose we do. Pretend we don't know anything? Act as if every scientific hypotheses is a mere conjecture like any other? Pretend that cloud cover has no effect on the atmosphere?
We don't have the ability to stop all air traffic for a few days whenever we want just to take more measurements, we had a chance and we took measurements. We compared those measurements to decades of data used as a baseline. We came to a conclusion based on that data taking into account all that we know (I acknowledge that you think claiming that you know something is bad) about the atmosphere. That's the way science works.
You want to throw away all that and look for an "alternative" explanation. Why? Why not take the most logical and obvious explanation?
You are the second stupidest person on slashdot I have argued with to date. Congratulations.
"Your statement that we definitely affect global climate seems quite premature. "
So far all you have done is use weasel words and avoided saying anything at all. Do me a favor say the phrase 'Humans beings have zero effect on global climate' so I can save that post and show it to other people. I am sure will provide some amusement to my friends.
So which is it? You have two choices.
1) Human beings have zero effect on global climate.
2) human beings have some effect on global climate.
Go ahead, don't be afraid, choose one.
"Correction: they are taken in context with everything else we hypothesize about the atmosphere and physics."
False. Or are you saying that we don't know anything about atmosphere and pysics and that everything we think we know is just a simple hypothesis. We don't know anything but we have a lot of guesses, is that what you are saying.
It sounds like you want KDE to act EXACTLY like windows and not just to have equavalent or similar functionality.
I don't think it will ever happen. It sounds like you will ever be happy with linux, if you want something to act exactly like windows then you should stick with windows.
It's an article on MSDN, you were not expecting them to say use Java were you?
I read someplace that there is nothing that XML can do that Lisp can't. Maybe they are talking about remaking lisp again.
"Exactly. There is only a statistical probability by accumulated observation. "
Right. And yet you behave every day as if the sun was going to come up tommorow. So does every body else. Despite the fact that you have no DEFINITIVE proof that the sun is going to come up tommorow you have sufficent confidence that it is going to and you live your life taking that into account.
The exact same thing goes for global warming. There is sufficient proof that the earth is getting warmer. There is sufficient proof that human beings effect the global wheater patterns. It's time you started living your life accordingly.
"The measurements are most likely fine for what they are, but using incomplete, uncontrolled data to reach conclusions is erroneous."
The measurements don't stand alone. They are taken in context with everything else we know about the atmosphere and physics. You want to throw it out altogether because it does not fit your ideology. This is not some weird bizaare unknown phenomena. It's simple cloud cover and the effects of cloud cover are well established. Contrails act exectly like cloud cover. Take away contrails and you have less cloud cover which DEFINITAVELY effects diurnal temprature differences.
You want to keep pretending that contrails have no effect on the weather be my guest. There is no sense in talking to the wilfully ignorant. It's one thing to be stupid, or ignorant, but to wilfully bury your head in the sand and keep saying "it's not definitive proof, it's not definitive proof" takes a special kind of fool.
It's obvious to me by now that you are willfully ignoring data that does not suit your rigid ideology.
By insisting on DEFINITIVE statements about the atmosphere you can conveniently ignore any study that does not suit your rigidly made up mind. Guess what there is no DEFINITIVE proof that the sun will come up tommorow.
If there was a study that said there was no such thing as global warming warming though I bet you would not insist on DEFINITIVE proof.
"Saying that the contrail measurements yield a definitive conclusion about a sophisticated sytsem like the weather is premature. One can state there is likely a correlation given our current understanding, but don't go around spouting a causal relationship as fact."
Oh yes we should definately ignore this piece of evidence alltogether. There is no sense in taking any research which goes against your ideology seriously.
Did you learn anything in that class about proving negatives? If not open up your book again.
"The weather is chaotic. All relevant factors influencing the weather are not known. Therefore, they cannot assert that they have definitively measured the effects of contrails simply because they don't know that the change was a result of some other unobserved factor (lower sunspot activity for the day for instance)."
That's just nonsense. Why would you attribute a change in duirnal tempratures to some unknown and unobserved phenomena when there are well established facts regarding heat retention and cloud cover. The same goes for reflectivity and cloud cover. The lack of contrails reduced cloud cover which made a difference in how much heat was retained. This is not some radical theory, it's a well established principle and we got a rare opportunity to observe it. All of it fits into our models perfectly.
You can ignore the evidence if you want or you can simply blame it on some deep voodoo perfomed by some mysterious as yet unkown force but nobody is going to take you seriously.
BTW saying that we don't know everything about wheather (true) and saying that wheather is a chaotic phenomenon (also true) is not the same as saying we don't know anything about the weather or that it's impossible to do any kind of analysis or come to any kind of conclusions.
The fact is that there are thousands of scientists who study the wheather for a living and have been doing for years. A lot is known. Some aspects of meteorology are chaotic but most of it is pysics. It's complex system but it's not unknowable.
"You consider it a superstition, and that's fine, but science cannot prove it so."
As I said before. The burden of proof is on you to prove that god exists. It's not possible to prove a negative. You really should take a logic course sometime.
" There is no controlled test (contrail experiment), therefore any such assertions are pure conjecture. I find it hard to believe that any true scientist would seriously consider that as solid evidence."
That's not true. There are contrails every day. Measurements are taken every day. There are thousands of points of data during contrail days to establish a baseline. If there is significant deviation from those measurements during days with no contrails then requirements for a control are met.
"There certainly is no question that human activity affects the environment;"
Good. I am glad we agree on that. The original poster stated that human activity did not effect the environment.
" the problem is we don't know how we affect such a complex system."
that's not quite true. We have lots of knowledge abot how actions effect the environment. Yes we don't know everything but we know a lot.
"If a person makes an assertion which presupposes that science will eliminate the belief in God, then it is incumbant upon him to prove that assertion. I believe God to be untestable, and thus, outside the realm of science. What science cannot test, it cannot banish."
Belief in god is superstition. It's no different then belief in santa claus, easter bunny or UFOs. The ideal of science is to discover the truth using the scientific method. This involves setting up theories and then testing them with rigorous experiments and observations that are repeatable.
There are lots of people who believe in goofy stuff and everybody knows you will never get them to stop believing in them. The fact that so many people in the world believe in invisible creatures in the sky is a failure of science, education and mankind in general.
"If you can't falsify the existence of God using imperical evidence, how do you expect science to illumine people and make it disappear?"
The burden of proof lies with those who believe in this fantastic creature. You can't proove a negative.