No its not. Its closer to between 15 and 17 thousand.
The "Iraq body count" site only counts verified deaths by news organisations. They say themselves that their estimates are conservative.
And anway, they are only counting civilian deaths. Your original statement referred to total deaths, which is clearly going to be much higher.
The number you are citing is most likely based on a refuted statistical study
Published in one of the world's most respected journalists, heavily peer-reviewed, and "refuted" by a journalist with absolutely no idea about statistics.
basically claims the total body count is between 8,000 and 200,000, with 100000 the midpoint. Thats a fairly large range, far too big to have any meaning at all.
It's a bell curve. 100,000 is rather more likely than either extreme. And, if you actually bother to read the paper, you'll see that they made some rather conservative measurements.
Yeah, it's such a shame when scientists change their theories when new facts come along. Much better to hold to a view and then stick to it, regardless of later facts.
Not that the article has the slightest thing to do with your comment.
Communism A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
Re:It happens every day
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Newsy Numbers
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I can see you haven't even read the paper you're criticising.
Re:It happens every day
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Taking the mean average ((8000+194000)/2=~100000) is not a good estimate when your numbers have such a large range.
Why not? To be the most accurate, they should have just said "at least 8000, but the number may turn out to be much higher when better data is available."
No they shouldn't, that would be unreasonably biased. The true value is just as likely to be close to the maximum as the minimum.
What they should have said was what they did say, that the range was 8,000-194,000 and that the mean was approximately 100,000.
I'd say that scientists aren't falsifying or misinterpreting their results; but are coming in with a preconceived notion. Having a preconceived notion of what they want the end goal to believe (intentional or not) they will tend to achieve that belief.
Why? What reason have you to believe this? Are you disputing their data, their models, or their interpretation? I look forward to seeing your response in/Nature/.
Or was it perhaps just too difficult to consider your belief that global warming isn't caused by humans might be wrong in the face of scientific evidence? Nope, much easier to just assume that a paper that has just gone through perhaps the most rigorous peer-review of any journal in the world was based on wishful thinking.
Also, there's the related matter that Earth's temperature has been warming up for the last 10,000 years. This is no time to use the Razor.
However, the current period of warming is the fastest known in the entire history of the Earth. The obvious candidate is us; Occam's Razor.
Seeding iron-poor regions of the oceans appears feasible and of a sufficient order of magnitude to be relevant.
Not really. That's no reason not to research these things but it doesn't look like there are any magic bullets.
Deforestation is a big contribution to the overall CO2 levels (I've seen estimates that the levels of deforestation in the 90's contributed almost as much as industrial output) and is a problem primarily of developing countries.
This may be true, but I don't see your point. This is a reason to adopt the treaty since Kyoto already takes this into account.
Actually, if you look at the data rather than pulling facts out of your arse, you will see that the USA is the world's worst polluter (approx 5.4 million tons of CO2/year), producing almost twice as much CO2 as China (2.9 million).
It's FALSE that some of the largest up-and-coming poluters are exempt?
Yes. They are limited by how much they can increase their emissions by. They are not exempt from the terms of the treaty, so the statement was false.
Oh, so countries that don't polute much now, but will in 10 years, are given a free pass, afterall.
No. The aim is to stop developing countries from reaching the pollution levels of industrialised countries, which would likely be the result of not implementing the treaty.
You really need to go back to English class
Hahahaha. Learn how to spell "pollute" (see text in bold above).
I'm not sure I understand your point. I was trying to say that the people who are shouting that the treaty is unfair are the ones who live in the most industrialised countries. The treaty/is/ unfair, but biased toward those countries, not developing countries. I think a lot of the cries of "unfair!" are coming from people who don't understand it.
While it's pretty clear that human activity has boosted CO2 levels to record levels, and there's strong evidence that global warming is occuring, the two aren't properly linked.
They show a strong correlation, and while it's difficult to show conclusively that the latter is a result of the former, there's a clear scientific understanding of how increasing CO2 levels can lead to warming (the greenhouse effect). There's also no other good candidate, so Occam's Razor comes into play.
Another possibility is that increasing solar output is responsible for global warming not human activity.
It's a possibility but no real evidence has been found for it, so it is really speculation.
Second, only reduction in CO2 production is considered for the Kyoto treaty. Some work has been done on carbon sequestration. While these methods may prove infeasible, it seems absurd to ignore them in the treaty.
Since none of them are practical at the moment this isn't really surprising.
Further, developed countries have to cut back, but underdeveloped ones do not.
Developing countries do have restrictions on how much they can increase their emissions by. This "disparity" is because industrialised countries are already far greater polluters.
China emits 2,893 million metric tons of CO2 per year (2.3 tons per capita). This compares to 5,410 million from the USA (20.1 tons per capita), and 3,171 million from the EU (8.5 tons per capita).
I suspect our strategies were so good that many of the animals that could be hunted in this way were made extinct. A lot of big animals died out in the Pleistocene.
But in addition to outthinking them, we could outwalk them.
I'm not sure abstract intelligence was that useful to our distant ancestors (though of course it has become more useful as civilisation has developed).
I'd more likely point to our superb visual acuity, and our unparalleled dexterity and communication skills. It was these qualities, coupled to our endurance, that I would argue made our species successful enough to be able to afford to develop large brains.
That quiz is quite heavily biased in questions. A much better quiz (IMO) is the Political Compass. I've yet to find anyone who disagrees with its verdict.
The amount by which they can increase emissions is constrained. Since they produce vastly less CO2 per capita than the major industrialised countries, woudn't you agree that it would be unrealistic to expect them to make a reduction in their emissions?
I was going to argue with your points, but then I realised that you didn't have any. Then I realised that your post didn't actually make any sense. For example, what the hell does this mean?
The Kyoto fails entirly at reducing our energy demand (wich already reaches 10% of the daily bruto solar energy added to our system every day)
This is a good point, and there is something of a historical parallel. In 1992, after years of Conservative rule, the Tory party managed to win the UK general election despite being behind in the polls (even the exit polls) and generally being less popular than herpes.
Five years of corruption and incompetence later, the Labour party (with a new charismatic leader) won a record-breaking landslide and the Tories look to be finished as a political force.
Try to learn from our mistakes however by not selecting a right winger as the Democrat nominee.
You might be a whiny left winger, but as today as a resident from another country I can tell you you "whiny left wingers" are the only americans for which we keep some respect.
Damn right. I had twenty quid riding on the outcome of the election. I said that Americans weren't so brain-dead and masochistic as to vote themselves another four years of Bush. My friend said they were.
I'm going to give up making bets whilst being stoned.
Bush has killed 100,000 civilians and 1000 servicemen.
That's 1,000 coalition servicemen. There were also many casualties in the Iraqi military. Attempts to count them have so far resulted in figures anywhere from 20,000 to more than 100,000. For some reason, civilian deaths seem to count but they don't.
None of your quotations are attacking any actual part of the method used in the study, they're just generalisations.
There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began
Well of course there's no fucking official figure. Who could possibly give an "official" figure? God?
some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000.
As time goes on, more people are killed, and it is possible to establish that more people have been killed.
concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision,"
As opposed to most studies which are of infinite precision?
quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study
Well yes.
report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.
And why not? Isn't this the most vital time that people hear this information?
possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq
However, this information could be biased in either direction. Some areas of Iraq were excluded because they were too dangerous for the investigators; weren't they likely to have suffered more deaths?
more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report
Well obviously. This is true for any study or poll ever published.
The story forgot to mention the other side. According to the Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq, 600,000 civilians were executed during Sadaam Hussein's regime.
What is the "Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq"? Is it this? It doesn't look very scientific.
Saddam was undoubtedly very keen on executions, but 600,000 seems like a huge over-estimate. Of course it depends on how you define an "execution" -- for example if you count the gassing of the Kurds with the chemical weapons the West sold him.
Like the posting said, make sure you vote--just like the people in Iraq finally had a chance to.
Slashdot Mirror
No its not. Its closer to between 15 and 17 thousand.
The "Iraq body count" site only counts verified deaths by news organisations. They say themselves that their estimates are conservative.
And anway, they are only counting civilian deaths. Your original statement referred to total deaths, which is clearly going to be much higher.
The number you are citing is most likely based on a refuted statistical study
Published in one of the world's most respected journalists, heavily peer-reviewed, and "refuted" by a journalist with absolutely no idea about statistics.
basically claims the total body count is between 8,000 and 200,000, with 100000 the midpoint. Thats a fairly large range, far too big to have any meaning at all.
It's a bell curve. 100,000 is rather more likely than either extreme. And, if you actually bother to read the paper, you'll see that they made some rather conservative measurements.
Yeah, it's such a shame when scientists change their theories when new facts come along. Much better to hold to a view and then stick to it, regardless of later facts.
Not that the article has the slightest thing to do with your comment.
Mr. Dictionary? wtf?
According to the OED:
Communism
A theory which advocates a state of society in which there should be no private ownership, all property being vested in the community and labour organized for the common benefit of all members; the professed principle being that each should work according to his capacity, and receive according to his wants.
I can see you haven't even read the paper you're criticising.
Taking the mean average ((8000+194000)/2=~100000) is not a good estimate when your numbers have such a large range.
Why not?
To be the most accurate, they should have just said "at least 8000, but the number may turn out to be much higher when better data is available."
No they shouldn't, that would be unreasonably biased. The true value is just as likely to be close to the maximum as the minimum.
What they should have said was what they did say, that the range was 8,000-194,000 and that the mean was approximately 100,000.
I'd say that scientists aren't falsifying or misinterpreting their results; but are coming in with a preconceived notion. Having a preconceived notion of what they want the end goal to believe (intentional or not) they will tend to achieve that belief.
/Nature/.
Why? What reason have you to believe this? Are you disputing their data, their models, or their interpretation? I look forward to seeing your response in
Or was it perhaps just too difficult to consider your belief that global warming isn't caused by humans might be wrong in the face of scientific evidence? Nope, much easier to just assume that a paper that has just gone through perhaps the most rigorous peer-review of any journal in the world was based on wishful thinking.
Let me guess, you didn't read the paper?
The problem is that we simply haven't got a lot of recorded data of weather conditions before we started using fossil fuels
*Sigh*.
We have all sorts of climate data leading back millennia. Just as an example, read up on ice cores.
Also, there's the related matter that Earth's temperature has been warming up for the last 10,000 years. This is no time to use the Razor.
However, the current period of warming is the fastest known in the entire history of the Earth. The obvious candidate is us; Occam's Razor.
Seeding iron-poor regions of the oceans appears feasible and of a sufficient order of magnitude to be relevant.
Not really. That's no reason not to research these things but it doesn't look like there are any magic bullets.
Deforestation is a big contribution to the overall CO2 levels (I've seen estimates that the levels of deforestation in the 90's contributed almost as much as industrial output) and is a problem primarily of developing countries.
This may be true, but I don't see your point. This is a reason to adopt the treaty since Kyoto already takes this into account.
Actually, if you look at the data rather than pulling facts out of your arse, you will see that the USA is the world's worst polluter (approx 5.4 million tons of CO2/year), producing almost twice as much CO2 as China (2.9 million).
Per capita it's 20.1 tons to 2.3 tons.
Feel stupid?
It's FALSE that some of the largest up-and-coming poluters are exempt?
Yes. They are limited by how much they can increase their emissions by. They are not exempt from the terms of the treaty, so the statement was false.
Oh, so countries that don't polute much now, but will in 10 years, are given a free pass, afterall.
No. The aim is to stop developing countries from reaching the pollution levels of industrialised countries, which would likely be the result of not implementing the treaty.
You really need to go back to English class
Hahahaha. Learn how to spell "pollute" (see text in bold above).
I'm not sure I understand your point. I was trying to say that the people who are shouting that the treaty is unfair are the ones who live in the most industrialised countries. The treaty /is/ unfair, but biased toward those countries, not developing countries. I think a lot of the cries of "unfair!" are coming from people who don't understand it.
While it's pretty clear that human activity has boosted CO2 levels to record levels, and there's strong evidence that global warming is occuring, the two aren't properly linked.
They show a strong correlation, and while it's difficult to show conclusively that the latter is a result of the former, there's a clear scientific understanding of how increasing CO2 levels can lead to warming (the greenhouse effect). There's also no other good candidate, so Occam's Razor comes into play.
Another possibility is that increasing solar output is responsible for global warming not human activity.
It's a possibility but no real evidence has been found for it, so it is really speculation.
Second, only reduction in CO2 production is considered for the Kyoto treaty. Some work has been done on carbon sequestration. While these methods may prove infeasible, it seems absurd to ignore them in the treaty.
Since none of them are practical at the moment this isn't really surprising.
Further, developed countries have to cut back, but underdeveloped ones do not.
Developing countries do have restrictions on how much they can increase their emissions by. This "disparity" is because industrialised countries are already far greater polluters.
From another poster in this story:
China emits 2,893 million metric tons of CO2 per year (2.3 tons per capita). This compares to 5,410 million from the USA (20.1 tons per capita), and 3,171 million from the EU (8.5 tons per capita).
OK fine, we'll apply a uniform standard to all: we'll give everyone the same maximum CO2 emission levels. Who do you think gets hit hardest?
I suspect our strategies were so good that many of the animals that could be hunted in this way were made extinct. A lot of big animals died out in the Pleistocene.
But in addition to outthinking them, we could outwalk them.
I'm not sure abstract intelligence was that useful to our distant ancestors (though of course it has become more useful as civilisation has developed).
I'd more likely point to our superb visual acuity, and our unparalleled dexterity and communication skills. It was these qualities, coupled to our endurance, that I would argue made our species successful enough to be able to afford to develop large brains.
That quiz is quite heavily biased in questions. A much better quiz (IMO) is the Political Compass. I've yet to find anyone who disagrees with its verdict.
The amount by which they can increase emissions is constrained. Since they produce vastly less CO2 per capita than the major industrialised countries, woudn't you agree that it would be unrealistic to expect them to make a reduction in their emissions?
I was going to argue with your points, but then I realised that you didn't have any. Then I realised that your post didn't actually make any sense. For example, what the hell does this mean?
The Kyoto fails entirly at reducing our energy demand (wich already reaches 10% of the daily bruto solar energy added to our system every day)
Anyone?
This is a good point, and there is something of a historical parallel. In 1992, after years of Conservative rule, the Tory party managed to win the UK general election despite being behind in the polls (even the exit polls) and generally being less popular than herpes.
Five years of corruption and incompetence later, the Labour party (with a new charismatic leader) won a record-breaking landslide and the Tories look to be finished as a political force.
Try to learn from our mistakes however by not selecting a right winger as the Democrat nominee.
You might be a whiny left winger, but as today as a resident from another country I can tell you you "whiny left wingers" are the only americans for which we keep some respect.
Damn right. I had twenty quid riding on the outcome of the election. I said that Americans weren't so brain-dead and masochistic as to vote themselves another four years of Bush. My friend said they were.
I'm going to give up making bets whilst being stoned.
Bush has killed 100,000 civilians and 1000 servicemen.
That's 1,000 coalition servicemen. There were also many casualties in the Iraqi military. Attempts to count them have so far resulted in figures anywhere from 20,000 to more than 100,000. For some reason, civilian deaths seem to count but they don't.
None of your quotations are attacking any actual part of the method used in the study, they're just generalisations.
There is no official figure for the number of
Iraqis killed since the conflict began
Well of course there's no fucking official figure. Who could possibly give an "official" figure? God?
some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000.
As time goes on, more people are killed, and it is possible to establish that more people have been killed.
concede that the data they based their projections on were of "limited precision,"
As opposed to most studies which are of infinite precision?
quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study
Well yes.
report was released just days before the U.S. presidential election, and the lead researcher said he wanted it that way.
And why not? Isn't this the most vital time that people hear this information?
possible that they may have zoned in on hotspots that might not be representative of the death toll across Iraq
However, this information could be biased in either direction. Some areas of Iraq were excluded because they were too dangerous for the investigators; weren't they likely to have suffered more deaths?
more household clusters would have improved the precision of the report
Well obviously. This is true for any study or poll ever published.
The story forgot to mention the other side. According to the Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq, 600,000 civilians were executed during Sadaam Hussein's regime.
What is the "Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq"? Is it this? It doesn't look very scientific.
Saddam was undoubtedly very keen on executions, but 600,000 seems like a huge over-estimate. Of course it depends on how you define an "execution" -- for example if you count the gassing of the Kurds with the chemical weapons the West sold him.
Like the posting said, make sure you vote--just like the people in Iraq finally had a chance to.
When did Iraq have elections?
From the article: "And apart from an itchy sensation around the scalp electrode, subjects in the trials reported no side-effects."
If the effect is psychological, having a physically detectable (by the subject) component is likely to reinforce it.