"All theses right wing religious people try to play off that the word 'theory' means the same thing as a 'guess'. Thats simply not the case"
That's not it at all. They're not saying that a theory is a "guess". They're classifying a theory as less than fact, because that's how the word is defined in high school science classes, remember?
In high school, it's taught that scientific knowledge has stages:
1- Hypothesis - You formulate an idea on a problem and how to address it.
2- Theory - You actually put that hypothesis to the test by trying it via the scientific method.
3- Fact - the result if your idea was right, and the testing of the theory proved it.
However, professional scientists define theory differently. They define a valid theory as a reproduceble result of the best available data, and a working solution to a problem. "Theory" is as final a stage as it gets for them, because new data often changes the "facts".
I've heard several scientists in the media complain that we should change the way we teach the word "theory" in high school because of this issue. Because of the way it's taught, it really has two different, and somewhat conflicting meanings.
"No - I think that teaching science should be left to those who have expertise in science.
True, but are you saying that non-experts can't object? You laugh and make flat-earth jokes, but it used to be accepted science in the early 19th century that some races were superior to others. In the early 20th century, eugenics became standard fare in science circles, backed by all learned men, not just scientists. Scientists said eugenics was solid scientific truth, and so people from Woodrow Wilson to Margaret Sanger endorsed the theories in practice. Eugenics did't fall out of favor until people objected to it on moral grounds.
Humans are not machines... we do not (and truly, can not) judge all things on pure logic. There are other things we value. That's not an excuse to ignore scientific proof, but realize that, from past experience, even scientists have re-evaluated their ideas and found them wanting, even if they had good data behind them. Eugenics is an excellent example of this. Maybe we could build a super-pure, almost perfect race through breeding programs and forced sterilization of the "unfit". But we'd abandon our humanity in the process. Not all scientific issues should be settled on purely logical grounds. Not if you want to keep any semblance of free will.
Scientists and their allies don't want to hear this, but when it comes to the spread of knowledge, they have the same responsiblity as religious clergy do: they have to win hearts and minds. Simply declaring from the mountaintop "The data says this, and you will adjust your policies accordingly" is kind of a stupid thing to do with human beings, especially humans in free societies. Simply being told that they have to do something often provokes rebellion for rebellion's sake, even if, upon further reflection, they might have agreed with the scientist in the first place. If you're going to have a career in science, and you're committed to spreading that knowledge to everyone, then you're going to have to take on that missionary role. If you tell people "science says so, this is the policy, this is what will be taught"... well, your opponents are only going to dig in harder.
Part of the problem that modern scientists have is that they're so far apart from the rest of the population (in the US, anyway) on their world views. Most Americans are religious, and a huge chunk of them are deeply so. Mocking those people isn't going to help your case. When you try to convince them of a position, first tell them the truth... that you only deal in what can be proven and tested. That means that you tell the existence of God can't be proven via scientific evidence, not "there is no God, you peons". Frankly, you can't prove that either. Second, respect their beliefs, even if you don't agree. You're the minority here, by far, and so taking an authoritarian tone is only going to make things worse.
"Taking DOS which was bought, and advancing it to Windows and then NT "
NT was a clean-room effort spearheaded by Dave Cutler who did Vax VMS; that's why NT sorta works.
I've got an NT server box at work, heavily firewalled off, or course, that's still in use because of a proprietary application. It's been running for 10 years now, with relatively few reboots. It's not QNX by any means, but aside from hardware repair, it typically only needs a reboot every few months or so. NT 4 was, in fact, pretty stable if you configured it correctly. Like other Microsoft OS's, many of NT's reputed problems were not with the OS itself, but apps that ran on it *COUGH*IIS 4*COUGH*... and the truth is, from Win2K onwards, their server products have mostly been very good. Win2K8 is beginning to look, in fact, like an outstanding product. Credit where credit is due, folks.
What has Bill Gates personally achieved? Note that personally ripping off the ideas of others is not an achievement.
Even Gates' enemies don't make statements that dumb.
Leaving aside the fact that very few people come up with original ideas at all... Steve Jobs ripped off Xerox, the Mac didn't just spring into his imagination from nothingness, you know... the kind of smarts and imagination it takes to build a multi-billion dollar empire is far beyond what most of us will ever have or do.
As for accomplishments... sometimes improving on an idea is an accomplishment, and while we rightfully skewer MS on what they did wrong, we should then also credit them for what they did right. Office would never have become a standard if customers didn't like it. Exchange would never has become a standard if customers didn't like it. Sharepoint Server is quickly becoming a standard because their customers absolutely love it.
MS, and Gates, have done plenty right. And they've got billions to show for it.
Nothing. I have already given him enough money by paying for his OS when I want to run linux.
Are there no independent white box system builders in your area? Is there no place you can go to have a box built for you? Can you not build one yourself?
It seems to me a little foolish to complain about the "Microsoft Tax" when you buy something like an HP or Dell. It's kind of like complaining that a GM dealership is slapping an "AC Delco" tax on you because those stereos are standard in GM vehicles. Either don't buy them, or cough up the money to replace them. You actually have more choice in buying PC hardware. You're only stuck with the "Microsoft Tax" if you insist on buying a PC from one of their big OEM partners.
Hell, you can even get laptops without Windows now.
... many countries are eagerly hoping that there IS a permanent melt up north for precisely those reasons, though they'd never admit it publicly... it would revolutionize shipping. And Canada, Denmark, Russia... many countries think that a lot of natural resources are waiting for them under that melting ice. Canada is now actively planning out new shipping routes, and trying to establish legal ownership of many of those possible routes across the north.
Tropical diseases were once common in the southern US. It wasn't climate change which made them rare; it was public health and medicine.
Thank you. I'm so tired of the global warming boogeyman being blamed for everything. At first we were told that global warming would bring more hurricanes. When we actually got fewer, we were then informed that, yes, global warming is responsible for that too.
I suspect that the revival of malaria in Florida has more to do with the fact that we're globalizing than global warming. Lots of South American cargo goes to Florida, much of it with disease-bearing insects. Here in the South, we have Tiger Mosquitos that came from Asia in shipments of tires a few decades ago. This kind of international traffic is why we have species like zebra muscles in our waterways... unless you want to blame that on global warming too.
Yeah, because everybody knows that the person who *really* knows about climate science is a bad fiction writer.
Chricton writes good fiction, your personal tastes aside. And if you're objecting to his opinions on the basis of him being an MD and not a climatologist, can we also get a "STFU" from the choir when guys like David Suzuki (who's a zoologist) does the same thing? Or are hysterical global warming prophets of doom that have no training in the field whatsoever exempt from your wrath?
I honestly don't know, but would ice core samples tell us much about the outer edges and rings of the ice, as they melt and re-freeze every year under even normal conditions? Would they tell us about the extent of past melting in distant times? It just seems to me that if you've got 750K years of ice in your core sample, then it's because you've gotten it closer to the center where it's never melted.
Under those conditions, it doesn't immediately become clear to me how much you could tell about the areas that go from ice to water every year.
"It's called SOLAR THERMAL. [wikipedia.org] And you use molten salt or graphite [wikipedia.org] to generate electricity at night."
Solar Thermal certainly sounds promising, but if it was as advanced or sufficient for our needs as you imply, why aren't we using it? Or are you going to toss a conspiracy theory at us about oil companies?
I've already said this in another thread; when solar becomes cost effective and practical and plentiful, then it will gain wide use, and not until then.
"The supplies of coal, oil, gas and fissionable materials is severely limited,"
The last three are questionable at best, but the first assertion is laughable. Coal is limited? We have more coal than we'd ever use in centuries. The United States alone has one quarter of the Earth's coal, some 250 gigatonnes. In all our history, we've used less than a fraction of one percent of that supply. Even if we turned coal into gasoline with current fuel economy standards, we'd never run out of coal in several lifetimes here in the US. And that doesn't include all of the other fossil fuel sources we have, like shale and tar sands and good ole' petroleum. We also have a lot of uranium untouched in North America.
So by all means, advocate that we continue to develop tech like solar and wind. By all means, argue against fossil fuel use on pollution grounds. But quit using the chicken little argument about fossil fuels being close to all used up. It simply isn't true when you look at all fossil fuels, even if you believe we've hit peak oil.
What they mean is: We fear that if solar and wind power are allowed to grow, it may create unemployment in the coal-mining and gas extraction industries.
A large solar and wind farm had the capability to replace the energy generated from a small coal mine. , which of course affects the voting pattern.
Says who? Even solar power advocates admit that the technology to give us energy equivalent to coal and other fossil fuel sources is still years in the future. That doesn't mean we should stop working to improve it, but to say that solar can replace coal now is not only a fairy tale, it's a conspiracy theory when you throw in that "we won't do it because of coal workers" crap. And frankly, that idea just doesn't jibe with history. Companies always go towards what is most efficient and helps make the most money. If you were right, we'd all still be using horses and buggies. We'd still be using steam engines. We'd still be using fireplaces for cooking and heating. Well, the buggy makers didn't manage to stop the auto manufacturers, did they? Because there was more money to be made there. Nuclear didn't stall because of conspiracy from fossil fuel companies. Nuclear stalled because of politics driving up the cost. In many cases, existing energy companies were trying to move beyond fossil to nuclear. Don't be shocked if the companies that successfully market solar in the future have names like Exxon and Shell.
Solar and Wind will take off when it's A) cost efficient, and B)it provides as much or more power than current sources. No amount of conspiracy theorizing will change that.
My argument against would be that folks that're "disabled" like me wouldn't have a chance to contribute to society as a whole....
In short, Beethoven.;)
You know, I hate to use a cheap pop cultural reference in a debate about something this serious, but an appropriate one comes to mind... in an old Star Trek:TNG episode, I recall the crew of the Enterprise visiting a planet where everything was planned, including reproduction of children, and all children were genetically engineered to excel at something. Of course, any fetus with a genetic deformity of any kind was automatically terminated; parents were given no choice in the matter. Upon learning this, Geordi LaForge, blind since birth, gets angry at the very notion of disposing of "imperfects".... like him.
"Who the hell are they to decide what kind of contribution I can make?", he said.
TV or not, that's one of the most insightful things I've ever heard in the whole "designer/perfect fetus" debate.
In Kelo vs. City of New London, it was the conservatives in the minority (and in my opinion, on the correct side of the issue). It was the liberals that decided that your local government could take your property from you in order to give it to a private third party. Conservatives were on the side of "the little guy" and liberals were on the side of "big business" on that one. The conventional wisdom gets topsy turvy at SCOTUS sometimes.
This will comfort huge numbers of single issue voters that would normally vote simply to protect their gun rights from Democrats.
I very much disagree. While 2nd amendment activists are pleased with the ruling, they're also deeply disturbed by the fact that it was 5-4. This only highlights the fact that elections are important. They matter, especially since the President nominates SCOTUS candidates.
Had Anthony Kennedy woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, the 2nd Amendement... a key part in the Bill of Rights... could have been voided with the stroke of a pen.
What disturbs me, and deeply, is that "the right to keep and bear arms" was all but ignored by 4 out of 9 people on that bench. I mean they basically reasoned that "well, it says that, but that's not what it really means".
The 2nd Amendment is in two parts... the first part gives a justification for the right, the second part lays out the actual guarantee to the right itself.
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Even if you think that changing times has voided the reasoning for the first part, that doesn't actually void the right guaranteed in the second part. The only way you're supposed to be able add or remove something from the Constitution, including rights themselves, is through the amendment process.
But in reality that's not how it works. In reality, a simple 5-4 majority can, with the stroke of a pen, completely null and void not just laws passed by Congress and local governments, but it seems that they can also void parts of the Constitution itself, simply by declaring, in legalese, "never mind what the text of the Amendment says, here's what it means".
This is, in practical terms, a kind of "tyranny of expertise"... the notion that only experts can understand the Constitution, no matter how plainly written its text is, and the rights of citizens are subordinate to these experts, as the flock was subordinate to the rulings of the Priesthood in the old days of the Catholic Church, dependent upon their interpretation of scripture. But I say that if common citizens cannot trust the Constitution to be understood in its plain text... if it doesn't "mean what it says".... then it's worthless. It is, in that case, not worth the paper it's written on. If the Constitution says "up means up", and a judge can say "no, up really means down in the Constitution", then we don't live in a free country after all. We are in thrall to the priesthood of experts.
Think about that for a moment. 4 people in black robes today voted to essentially null and void a part of the bill of rights, the amendment process aside, by declaring that, despite what is written in it, the right guaranteed in it was never really a right at all. Just kidding, folks. Ignore that "shall not be infringed" stuff. Is this not the kind of thing George Orwell warned of? Is this not Newspeak?
The vehicle of the minority's dissent was the notion of "collective rights". John Paul Stevens' dissent was truly frightening to read, as he reasons that virtually everything in the bill of rights is a "collective right"... not an individual right, but dependent upon the collective as a whole. It was Soviet-lite in its reasoning. What are rights if not for individuals? Isn't the very notion of a right that one man's liberty is not limited to the collective?
Today, I became convinced that the three branches are in fact not equal. I think SCOTUS is more powerful by far than the President and the Congress combined. Neither of those branches have the power to void the Constitution with an opinion, with the stroke of a pen. SCOTUS can null an executive order, or a law passed by Congress. The President and Congress can do nothing to cancel out a ruling of the SCOTUS. If the SCOTUS deems in a ruling that left really means right, then that's it. That's the law. And unless the President and Congress openly defy that ruling (and trigger a national crisis as a result), then "Stare Decisis" indeed makes left into right in the eyes of the law. The issue is settled.
I'm firmly convinced that if the United States ever has another Civil War, it will be the direct result of a Supreme Court decision.
I've always been a little wary of this whole "networked future force warrior" thing. I think it smacks more of hollywood sci-fi than real warfare, sometimes. I can definitely see the advantages of getting more information to your troops, but turning them into walking blackberries may not be the best way to do it in combat. There are some parts of soldiering that just aren't going to change no matter how much technology you throw at it, and the need for your troops on the ground to make quick, independent decisions is a good example. You don't want them constantly emailing/texting/radioing back and forth during a firefight for instructions. That's what unit leadership is for. Too much of this stuff is more bad cyberpunk novel than George Patton.
nearly 90 percent of your population believes in a God of some kind
Maybe in America, not in the UK (or Europe). Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, and if so, I apologize, but yes, I was definitely talking about America. Europe is most certainly in a Post-Christian phase among white Europeans, and a growing Muslim phase among their MIddle Eastern and African immigrants, a clash that ought to be interesting as the years go on.
"Am I the only person who prefers to read pdfs on a screen rather than a printed sheet of paper, let alone an e-reader? "
You're not the only one, but I'd bet most book lovers are just that... book lovers. They don't just love stories and histories and information; they love the books themselves. I dearly love the tactile feel of a book, the binding, the pages, even the smell of older books. I'm a nut for old textbooks from the pre-50's era. I collect them, and actually read them (and you'd be surprised at how they can be both simpler and yet more informative than modern texts. I'm picky about things like how the paper "feels". Now I work in IT, so I read lots of documentation on screens myself... PDF's, web pages, Word documents... but the only electronic format I truly enjoy reading is Wikis... I can get lost in Wikipedia for days, jumping from one subject to another. But as for reading books for pleasure? I just don't see myself getting a Kindle or anything like it. It's just not the same as reading a cloth and paper physical book to me.
I dunno, The God Delusion by Dawkins make precisely that argument and it was in NYT bestsellers for 51 weeks, reaching #4, as well as #2 on Amazon. True, but I didn't mean that atheists were doomed to market failure... almost 10 percent of the US population is agnostic or atheist, so there's 25 million+ plus people to sell books to...my main point was that, if you're looking for a list of "greatest books" for the whole population (and sales are going to be part of that), then scientists are still somewhat out of the general cultural zeitgeist. For both good and ill, they really do live in another world.
You just nailed it
on
Terminal Chaos
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Airline passengers were the very wealthy elites, now they're not. I work in an airport, and you just nailed the biggest reason for the changes in air travel. Because of deregulation and cheaper air travel technologies, among other things, it's cheaper to fly than it used to be. As another poster puts it, there's a lot more "riff raff" on flights now.
Of course flying was neater, cleaner, and more pleasant back when only the rich and big business travelers flew. It was essentially a luxury experience back then. Pam Am's Clipper line of flying boats had cuisine and accommodations as luxurious as any you'd find on a big cruise ship. They could afford to with what people were paying. In today's dollars, a Pan Am ticket from San Francisco to Hawaii via Clipper cost the equivalent of $10,000 dollars.
If anyone could suddenly afford to join your local country club, I promise you it'd get louder, busier, and more crowded too.
As an environmental or efficiency argument, that's a loser. Moving masses of people and goods via air is cost efficient in comparison to rail or ship, not to mention safer. Time has a value as well, and not just sentimental value. And trains and ships can't get you to as many destinations as aircraft can. If you magically grounded all aircraft, suddenly, travelers would have to supplement that rail and boat travel with land travel of some kind... probably via cars. Even if more people took the bus, they use a lot of fuel too.
First I'd have to possibly put Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time on there. It was pretty popular, and really good at explaining the comments to a mass audience.
Second, I just don't think popular culture is fertile ground for intellectual inquiry along the lines of hard science. Some popular mass-circulation magazines and newspapers used to have math and science sections of interest to general readership. You'll find nothing like that in People, Us, or USA Today.
Third, I think scientists have gone somewhat at odds with the general population in the past few decades as well. This is still largely a religious nation, but many books by the most prominent scientists now spend most of their time not only questioning things like religious belief and cherished cultural traditions, but mocking them outright as well. Richard Dawkins all but calls religious people idiots in his books. That's kind of a hard sell when nearly 90 percent of your population believes in a God of some kind.
What was that line from that movie... Contact? Palmer Joss's line?
Our job was to select someone to speak for everybody. And I just couldn't in good conscience vote for a person who doesn't believe in God. Someone who honestly thinks the other ninety five percent of us suffer from some form of mass delusion.
Just possibly, making the argument to most of the population that their beliefs are nothing but twaddle probably doesn't do wonders for book sales.
" I think the money and time are better spent trying to figure out how to get us off fossil fuels than just postponing the inevitable decline of oil."
First, I have to challenge you on the "inevitable decline" statement. It IS inevitable, but new oil fields (some of them massive, like the one off the coast of Brazil) are being found, and oil isn't the only fossil fuel source. Include shale, tar sands, natural gas, and coal, and you have more energy than all the nations of the world would use in hundreds of years. So it's inevitable the same way that the Sun will one day burn out. It's just disingenuous to pretend that will happen tomorrow, though.
Second, why can't we do both? Why can't we drill/explore for new fossil fuel sources while we improve nuke technology and develop new renewable sources? What's with this false dichotomy of "one or the other"? It's not like if we abandoned oil that all the petroleum engineers and geologists could suddenly turn their attention to making new solar tech. They don't know a damned thing about it. This whole "we need to all pull in one direction" argument is not only impractical, it's impossible.
I wish you guys making this argument would fess up, be honest, and simply admit that you simply don't want man to go after more hydrocarbon energy sources no matter what, whether it's for enviromental reasons, efficiency, reasons, polution reasons, whatever. Just be honest. It's like this stupid refrain on drilling off the coasts; "but the oil companies already have millions of acres of leases".
Come on. Like you really want them to get MORE oil from those lands anyway, right? The truth is, you want mankind to abandon hydrocarbon fuels altogether, as soon as possible, even if it makes things harder for the present time. You don't want any drilling at all. I'd respect you guys a hell of a lot more if you'd just admit that you want us all to go on a forced energy fast instead of dancing around the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
"All theses right wing religious people try to play off that the word 'theory' means the same thing as a 'guess'. Thats simply not the case"
That's not it at all. They're not saying that a theory is a "guess". They're classifying a theory as less than fact, because that's how the word is defined in high school science classes, remember?
In high school, it's taught that scientific knowledge has stages:
1- Hypothesis - You formulate an idea on a problem and how to address it.
2- Theory - You actually put that hypothesis to the test by trying it via the scientific method.
3- Fact - the result if your idea was right, and the testing of the theory proved it.
However, professional scientists define theory differently. They define a valid theory as a reproduceble result of the best available data, and a working solution to a problem. "Theory" is as final a stage as it gets for them, because new data often changes the "facts".
I've heard several scientists in the media complain that we should change the way we teach the word "theory" in high school because of this issue. Because of the way it's taught, it really has two different, and somewhat conflicting meanings.
"No - I think that teaching science should be left to those who have expertise in science.
True, but are you saying that non-experts can't object? You laugh and make flat-earth jokes, but it used to be accepted science in the early 19th century that some races were superior to others. In the early 20th century, eugenics became standard fare in science circles, backed by all learned men, not just scientists. Scientists said eugenics was solid scientific truth, and so people from Woodrow Wilson to Margaret Sanger endorsed the theories in practice. Eugenics did't fall out of favor until people objected to it on moral grounds.
Humans are not machines... we do not (and truly, can not) judge all things on pure logic. There are other things we value. That's not an excuse to ignore scientific proof, but realize that, from past experience, even scientists have re-evaluated their ideas and found them wanting, even if they had good data behind them. Eugenics is an excellent example of this. Maybe we could build a super-pure, almost perfect race through breeding programs and forced sterilization of the "unfit". But we'd abandon our humanity in the process. Not all scientific issues should be settled on purely logical grounds. Not if you want to keep any semblance of free will.
Scientists and their allies don't want to hear this, but when it comes to the spread of knowledge, they have the same responsiblity as religious clergy do: they have to win hearts and minds. Simply declaring from the mountaintop "The data says this, and you will adjust your policies accordingly" is kind of a stupid thing to do with human beings, especially humans in free societies. Simply being told that they have to do something often provokes rebellion for rebellion's sake, even if, upon further reflection, they might have agreed with the scientist in the first place. If you're going to have a career in science, and you're committed to spreading that knowledge to everyone, then you're going to have to take on that missionary role. If you tell people "science says so, this is the policy, this is what will be taught"... well, your opponents are only going to dig in harder.
Part of the problem that modern scientists have is that they're so far apart from the rest of the population (in the US, anyway) on their world views. Most Americans are religious, and a huge chunk of them are deeply so. Mocking those people isn't going to help your case. When you try to convince them of a position, first tell them the truth... that you only deal in what can be proven and tested. That means that you tell the existence of God can't be proven via scientific evidence, not "there is no God, you peons". Frankly, you can't prove that either. Second, respect their beliefs, even if you don't agree. You're the minority here, by far, and so taking an authoritarian tone is only going to make things worse.
"Taking DOS which was bought, and advancing it to Windows and then NT "
NT was a clean-room effort spearheaded by Dave Cutler who did Vax VMS; that's why NT sorta works.
I've got an NT server box at work, heavily firewalled off, or course, that's still in use because of a proprietary application. It's been running for 10 years now, with relatively few reboots. It's not QNX by any means, but aside from hardware repair, it typically only needs a reboot every few months or so. NT 4 was, in fact, pretty stable if you configured it correctly. Like other Microsoft OS's, many of NT's reputed problems were not with the OS itself, but apps that ran on it *COUGH*IIS 4*COUGH*... and the truth is, from Win2K onwards, their server products have mostly been very good. Win2K8 is beginning to look, in fact, like an outstanding product. Credit where credit is due, folks.
What has Bill Gates personally achieved? Note that personally ripping off the ideas of others is not an achievement.
Even Gates' enemies don't make statements that dumb.
Leaving aside the fact that very few people come up with original ideas at all... Steve Jobs ripped off Xerox, the Mac didn't just spring into his imagination from nothingness, you know... the kind of smarts and imagination it takes to build a multi-billion dollar empire is far beyond what most of us will ever have or do.
As for accomplishments... sometimes improving on an idea is an accomplishment, and while we rightfully skewer MS on what they did wrong, we should then also credit them for what they did right. Office would never have become a standard if customers didn't like it. Exchange would never has become a standard if customers didn't like it. Sharepoint Server is quickly becoming a standard because their customers absolutely love it.
MS, and Gates, have done plenty right. And they've got billions to show for it.
Nothing. I have already given him enough money by paying for his OS when I want to run linux.
Are there no independent white box system builders in your area? Is there no place you can go to have a box built for you? Can you not build one yourself?
It seems to me a little foolish to complain about the "Microsoft Tax" when you buy something like an HP or Dell. It's kind of like complaining that a GM dealership is slapping an "AC Delco" tax on you because those stereos are standard in GM vehicles. Either don't buy them, or cough up the money to replace them. You actually have more choice in buying PC hardware. You're only stuck with the "Microsoft Tax" if you insist on buying a PC from one of their big OEM partners.
Hell, you can even get laptops without Windows now.
... many countries are eagerly hoping that there IS a permanent melt up north for precisely those reasons, though they'd never admit it publicly... it would revolutionize shipping. And Canada, Denmark, Russia... many countries think that a lot of natural resources are waiting for them under that melting ice. Canada is now actively planning out new shipping routes, and trying to establish legal ownership of many of those possible routes across the north.
Tropical diseases were once common in the southern US. It wasn't climate change which made them rare; it was public health and medicine.
Thank you. I'm so tired of the global warming boogeyman being blamed for everything. At first we were told that global warming would bring more hurricanes. When we actually got fewer, we were then informed that, yes, global warming is responsible for that too.
I suspect that the revival of malaria in Florida has more to do with the fact that we're globalizing than global warming. Lots of South American cargo goes to Florida, much of it with disease-bearing insects. Here in the South, we have Tiger Mosquitos that came from Asia in shipments of tires a few decades ago. This kind of international traffic is why we have species like zebra muscles in our waterways... unless you want to blame that on global warming too.
Yeah, because everybody knows that the person who *really* knows about climate science is a bad fiction writer.
Chricton writes good fiction, your personal tastes aside. And if you're objecting to his opinions on the basis of him being an MD and not a climatologist, can we also get a "STFU" from the choir when guys like David Suzuki (who's a zoologist) does the same thing? Or are hysterical global warming prophets of doom that have no training in the field whatsoever exempt from your wrath?
if by 100 years, you mean 750K years, the yes.
Ice core samples are wonderful things.
I honestly don't know, but would ice core samples tell us much about the outer edges and rings of the ice, as they melt and re-freeze every year under even normal conditions? Would they tell us about the extent of past melting in distant times? It just seems to me that if you've got 750K years of ice in your core sample, then it's because you've gotten it closer to the center where it's never melted.
Under those conditions, it doesn't immediately become clear to me how much you could tell about the areas that go from ice to water every year.
"It's called SOLAR THERMAL. [wikipedia.org] And you use molten salt or graphite [wikipedia.org] to generate electricity at night."
Solar Thermal certainly sounds promising, but if it was as advanced or sufficient for our needs as you imply, why aren't we using it? Or are you going to toss a conspiracy theory at us about oil companies?
I've already said this in another thread; when solar becomes cost effective and practical and plentiful, then it will gain wide use, and not until then.
"The supplies of coal, oil, gas and fissionable materials is severely limited,"
The last three are questionable at best, but the first assertion is laughable. Coal is limited? We have more coal than we'd ever use in centuries. The United States alone has one quarter of the Earth's coal, some 250 gigatonnes. In all our history, we've used less than a fraction of one percent of that supply. Even if we turned coal into gasoline with current fuel economy standards, we'd never run out of coal in several lifetimes here in the US. And that doesn't include all of the other fossil fuel sources we have, like shale and tar sands and good ole' petroleum. We also have a lot of uranium untouched in North America.
So by all means, advocate that we continue to develop tech like solar and wind. By all means, argue against fossil fuel use on pollution grounds. But quit using the chicken little argument about fossil fuels being close to all used up. It simply isn't true when you look at all fossil fuels, even if you believe we've hit peak oil.
What they mean is: We fear that if solar and wind power are allowed to grow, it may create unemployment in the coal-mining and gas extraction industries.
A large solar and wind farm had the capability to replace the energy generated from a small coal mine. , which of course affects the voting pattern.
Says who? Even solar power advocates admit that the technology to give us energy equivalent to coal and other fossil fuel sources is still years in the future. That doesn't mean we should stop working to improve it, but to say that solar can replace coal now is not only a fairy tale, it's a conspiracy theory when you throw in that "we won't do it because of coal workers" crap. And frankly, that idea just doesn't jibe with history. Companies always go towards what is most efficient and helps make the most money. If you were right, we'd all still be using horses and buggies. We'd still be using steam engines. We'd still be using fireplaces for cooking and heating. Well, the buggy makers didn't manage to stop the auto manufacturers, did they? Because there was more money to be made there. Nuclear didn't stall because of conspiracy from fossil fuel companies. Nuclear stalled because of politics driving up the cost. In many cases, existing energy companies were trying to move beyond fossil to nuclear. Don't be shocked if the companies that successfully market solar in the future have names like Exxon and Shell.
Solar and Wind will take off when it's A) cost efficient, and B)it provides as much or more power than current sources. No amount of conspiracy theorizing will change that.
My argument against would be that folks that're "disabled" like me wouldn't have a chance to contribute to society as a whole....
In short, Beethoven. ;)
You know, I hate to use a cheap pop cultural reference in a debate about something this serious, but an appropriate one comes to mind... in an old Star Trek:TNG episode, I recall the crew of the Enterprise visiting a planet where everything was planned, including reproduction of children, and all children were genetically engineered to excel at something. Of course, any fetus with a genetic deformity of any kind was automatically terminated; parents were given no choice in the matter. Upon learning this, Geordi LaForge, blind since birth, gets angry at the very notion of disposing of "imperfects".... like him.
"Who the hell are they to decide what kind of contribution I can make?", he said.
TV or not, that's one of the most insightful things I've ever heard in the whole "designer/perfect fetus" debate.
It's good to see that the Constitution still means something.
The fact that someone modded that comment to zero is disturbing..In Kelo vs. City of New London, it was the conservatives in the minority (and in my opinion, on the correct side of the issue). It was the liberals that decided that your local government could take your property from you in order to give it to a private third party. Conservatives were on the side of "the little guy" and liberals were on the side of "big business" on that one. The conventional wisdom gets topsy turvy at SCOTUS sometimes.
This will comfort huge numbers of single issue voters that would normally vote simply to protect their gun rights from Democrats.
I very much disagree. While 2nd amendment activists are pleased with the ruling, they're also deeply disturbed by the fact that it was 5-4. This only highlights the fact that elections are important. They matter, especially since the President nominates SCOTUS candidates.Had Anthony Kennedy woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, the 2nd Amendement... a key part in the Bill of Rights... could have been voided with the stroke of a pen.
What disturbs me, and deeply, is that "the right to keep and bear arms" was all but ignored by 4 out of 9 people on that bench. I mean they basically reasoned that "well, it says that, but that's not what it really means".
The 2nd Amendment is in two parts... the first part gives a justification for the right, the second part lays out the actual guarantee to the right itself.
Even if you think that changing times has voided the reasoning for the first part, that doesn't actually void the right guaranteed in the second part. The only way you're supposed to be able add or remove something from the Constitution, including rights themselves, is through the amendment process.
But in reality that's not how it works. In reality, a simple 5-4 majority can, with the stroke of a pen, completely null and void not just laws passed by Congress and local governments, but it seems that they can also void parts of the Constitution itself, simply by declaring, in legalese, "never mind what the text of the Amendment says, here's what it means".
This is, in practical terms, a kind of "tyranny of expertise"... the notion that only experts can understand the Constitution, no matter how plainly written its text is, and the rights of citizens are subordinate to these experts, as the flock was subordinate to the rulings of the Priesthood in the old days of the Catholic Church, dependent upon their interpretation of scripture. But I say that if common citizens cannot trust the Constitution to be understood in its plain text... if it doesn't "mean what it says" .... then it's worthless. It is, in that case, not worth the paper it's written on. If the Constitution says "up means up", and a judge can say "no, up really means down in the Constitution", then we don't live in a free country after all. We are in thrall to the priesthood of experts.
Think about that for a moment. 4 people in black robes today voted to essentially null and void a part of the bill of rights, the amendment process aside, by declaring that, despite what is written in it, the right guaranteed in it was never really a right at all. Just kidding, folks. Ignore that "shall not be infringed" stuff. Is this not the kind of thing George Orwell warned of? Is this not Newspeak?
The vehicle of the minority's dissent was the notion of "collective rights". John Paul Stevens' dissent was truly frightening to read, as he reasons that virtually everything in the bill of rights is a "collective right"... not an individual right, but dependent upon the collective as a whole. It was Soviet-lite in its reasoning. What are rights if not for individuals? Isn't the very notion of a right that one man's liberty is not limited to the collective?
Today, I became convinced that the three branches are in fact not equal. I think SCOTUS is more powerful by far than the President and the Congress combined. Neither of those branches have the power to void the Constitution with an opinion, with the stroke of a pen. SCOTUS can null an executive order, or a law passed by Congress. The President and Congress can do nothing to cancel out a ruling of the SCOTUS. If the SCOTUS deems in a ruling that left really means right, then that's it. That's the law. And unless the President and Congress openly defy that ruling (and trigger a national crisis as a result), then "Stare Decisis" indeed makes left into right in the eyes of the law. The issue is settled.
I'm firmly convinced that if the United States ever has another Civil War, it will be the direct result of a Supreme Court decision.
I've always been a little wary of this whole "networked future force warrior" thing. I think it smacks more of hollywood sci-fi than real warfare, sometimes. I can definitely see the advantages of getting more information to your troops, but turning them into walking blackberries may not be the best way to do it in combat. There are some parts of soldiering that just aren't going to change no matter how much technology you throw at it, and the need for your troops on the ground to make quick, independent decisions is a good example. You don't want them constantly emailing/texting/radioing back and forth during a firefight for instructions. That's what unit leadership is for. Too much of this stuff is more bad cyberpunk novel than George Patton.
Maybe in America, not in the UK (or Europe). Perhaps I didn't make myself clear, and if so, I apologize, but yes, I was definitely talking about America. Europe is most certainly in a Post-Christian phase among white Europeans, and a growing Muslim phase among their MIddle Eastern and African immigrants, a clash that ought to be interesting as the years go on.
"Am I the only person who prefers to read pdfs on a screen rather than a printed sheet of paper, let alone an e-reader? "
You're not the only one, but I'd bet most book lovers are just that... book lovers. They don't just love stories and histories and information; they love the books themselves. I dearly love the tactile feel of a book, the binding, the pages, even the smell of older books. I'm a nut for old textbooks from the pre-50's era. I collect them, and actually read them (and you'd be surprised at how they can be both simpler and yet more informative than modern texts. I'm picky about things like how the paper "feels". Now I work in IT, so I read lots of documentation on screens myself... PDF's, web pages, Word documents... but the only electronic format I truly enjoy reading is Wikis... I can get lost in Wikipedia for days, jumping from one subject to another. But as for reading books for pleasure? I just don't see myself getting a Kindle or anything like it. It's just not the same as reading a cloth and paper physical book to me.
Of course flying was neater, cleaner, and more pleasant back when only the rich and big business travelers flew. It was essentially a luxury experience back then. Pam Am's Clipper line of flying boats had cuisine and accommodations as luxurious as any you'd find on a big cruise ship. They could afford to with what people were paying. In today's dollars, a Pan Am ticket from San Francisco to Hawaii via Clipper cost the equivalent of $10,000 dollars.
If anyone could suddenly afford to join your local country club, I promise you it'd get louder, busier, and more crowded too.
"Take a train, take a boat"
As an environmental or efficiency argument, that's a loser. Moving masses of people and goods via air is cost efficient in comparison to rail or ship, not to mention safer. Time has a value as well, and not just sentimental value. And trains and ships can't get you to as many destinations as aircraft can. If you magically grounded all aircraft, suddenly, travelers would have to supplement that rail and boat travel with land travel of some kind... probably via cars. Even if more people took the bus, they use a lot of fuel too.
First I'd have to possibly put Stephen Hawking's A Brief History Of Time on there. It was pretty popular, and really good at explaining the comments to a mass audience.
Second, I just don't think popular culture is fertile ground for intellectual inquiry along the lines of hard science. Some popular mass-circulation magazines and newspapers used to have math and science sections of interest to general readership. You'll find nothing like that in People, Us, or USA Today.
Third, I think scientists have gone somewhat at odds with the general population in the past few decades as well. This is still largely a religious nation, but many books by the most prominent scientists now spend most of their time not only questioning things like religious belief and cherished cultural traditions, but mocking them outright as well. Richard Dawkins all but calls religious people idiots in his books. That's kind of a hard sell when nearly 90 percent of your population believes in a God of some kind.
What was that line from that movie... Contact? Palmer Joss's line?
Just possibly, making the argument to most of the population that their beliefs are nothing but twaddle probably doesn't do wonders for book sales.
" I think the money and time are better spent trying to figure out how to get us off fossil fuels than just postponing the inevitable decline of oil."
First, I have to challenge you on the "inevitable decline" statement. It IS inevitable, but new oil fields (some of them massive, like the one off the coast of Brazil) are being found, and oil isn't the only fossil fuel source. Include shale, tar sands, natural gas, and coal, and you have more energy than all the nations of the world would use in hundreds of years. So it's inevitable the same way that the Sun will one day burn out. It's just disingenuous to pretend that will happen tomorrow, though.
Second, why can't we do both? Why can't we drill/explore for new fossil fuel sources while we improve nuke technology and develop new renewable sources? What's with this false dichotomy of "one or the other"? It's not like if we abandoned oil that all the petroleum engineers and geologists could suddenly turn their attention to making new solar tech. They don't know a damned thing about it. This whole "we need to all pull in one direction" argument is not only impractical, it's impossible.
I wish you guys making this argument would fess up, be honest, and simply admit that you simply don't want man to go after more hydrocarbon energy sources no matter what, whether it's for enviromental reasons, efficiency, reasons, polution reasons, whatever. Just be honest. It's like this stupid refrain on drilling off the coasts; "but the oil companies already have millions of acres of leases".
Come on. Like you really want them to get MORE oil from those lands anyway, right? The truth is, you want mankind to abandon hydrocarbon fuels altogether, as soon as possible, even if it makes things harder for the present time. You don't want any drilling at all. I'd respect you guys a hell of a lot more if you'd just admit that you want us all to go on a forced energy fast instead of dancing around the subject.