I think that the problem here is akin to the the problems with the Gulf of Mexico spill. Some people view it as an engineering problem - it has causes and effects and we need to remove those effects as much as possible, as simply as possible and as quickly as possible. Others view it as a moral question - should we drill at all. The problem with viewing such large issues as moral problems before they've been resolved is that the blame game just gets in the way.
In the case of Climate Change, there are those that view it as an engineering problem. We could quickly cool the earth, simply by pumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, for instance. This is an engineering solution, identify the problem (surface too hot), identify a solution (volcanos cool the atmosphere by putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, sulfur dioxide degrades quickly so if we stop there'll be a relatively quick return to the norm) and identify a mechanism (a pump, hose and balloon). Of course this approach has downsides (such as acid rain). The engineers are optimistic, the belief is that while this is a challenge it is one that can be overcome, the same way as humanity has got over/around/through all problems in our history
Then there are those that view it as a moral question. These people will tell us that we need to reduce world population (without mentioning how because details are dirty), and stop emitting CO2 (with only vague notions of how they'll get their power or transport afterwards). It may well be a moral question, or at least there are certainly questions to answer about how we go forward, but stop stifling debate and research on the goddamn subject. Climate science is a complex multidisciplinary field and the models have many inputs, some of which are not particularly well understood. It's hard, and won't always be right. This is not an underlying fault with the field itself, so you don't need to crucify anyone who disagrees with the details.
The worst are the politicians, who've managed to create a nonsense system of magical money and credits that is completely meaningless yet makes money for those with vested interests. It's actually masterful. I tip my hat while shaking my head. It's also used as a stick to beat anyone who disagrees with them on any reason at all, and as a big lever to bring in massive taxation, none of which goes to, y'know, actually attempt to fix the problem.
Not controversial: The climate is changing. It's getting, on average warmer. The balance of evidence suggest anthropogenic contribution.
Very slightly controversial. There are factors we don't understand. It might not be all us.
Controversial: It's our fault. There's a tipping point and once we hit it we're fucked.
Mental: We should all go live in mud huts and knock off anyone who disagrees until we've got to about 50% of the current population. Give Al Gore all your monies to offset your carbon emissions.
I have two middle names on my birth certificate, and no-one here in Ireland cares whether I use them or not. In fact, the middle name boxes are marked "optional" on the drivers license and passport application forms. My new passport contains no middle names, because filling them out in immigration forms when travelling is a pain in the ass, although my old passport had one, and the one before that had both, and the old passport was considered enough of a proof of identity to get the new one. Same idea with the drivers license. They already know who I am, as long as I use my real name on official documentation they're not too bothered.
Why be that anal about it? Internally on all these systems you're a number (a passport or PPS number)
good god, don't let the Japanese have first contact! While I've great respect for the Japanese in general, their fascination with tentacles makes the prospect... tricky
Sure, but the problematic areas haven't been the physics, they've been areas like dendrochronology which are more biology (or wishful thinking, depending on who you listen to:) ), and the modeling of the climate systems. It is (or at least should be) non-controversial at this point that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and more CO2 means warmer temperatures. As far as I'm aware the only discussion is whether anthropogenic sources of CO2 are causing a measurable increase in that warming.
The problem is that when you go beyond superficial, statistics are complex, and certain analyses can be tricky, or not applicable even if they look applicable at first glance. There is also the perennial problem of the data that gets fed into those models, and area that's particularly prone to confirmation bias no matter how impartial the team is trying to be.
As far as "correlation does not imply causation", goes, you must also recall that causation requires correlation.
These are difficult issues to resolve. A buttload of statistics isn't much good if you're not using it right:)
There has been extensive reporting that the lack of statisticians in the climate research area is a problem.
Some chap called Wegman did a report for the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) that was rather critical of the lack of statistical expertise, and some of the most consistent complaints about climate research are in the area of statistics.
I'm not an expert and don't have an opinion on this, though!
The US Army justcancelled a similar project although their version was rather smaller than a shipping container, because in testing it didn't meet some of the requirements (i believe it was the IR seeking mode that was problematic) and because it would have cost ~$200k per missile (it costs ~$500k at the moment).
Apparently the technology was 90% ready,though.
Not sure I like the idea of this. There are too many crazies with access to the kind of money that makes this viable
I must disagree - availability of games is a major reason why linux on the desktop hasn't taken off. It's certainly the only reason I have a windows install at all. At this point, I buy most of my games through Steam, simply because it has the best offerings of all the electronic distribution channels. The only thing missing from it is some kind of family account that lets you share your games with more than one login. Having it manage patching is dead handy, it's a one stop place for all games, and it allows unlimited downloads so if you lose a partition or your computer blows up, just log in and download again.
Steam praise aside, it is difficult to get people to use Linux for many reasons, but with distributions like Ubuntu it's hardly ease of use that is the major barrier anymore. Most personal e-mail accounts are online now, so it comes down (for the majority of the market) to office apps and games. PC gaming may be less popular now, but if a large proportion of the Steam library of games was available on Linux, you can encourage the younger crowd to use it. They'll be more comfortable with it, and over time that translates into more demand.
Actually, there's a strong argument that the large aid flows are the underlying problem.
It boils down to this. 1. We give lots of money. Billions. 2. The oversight is minimal. For instance, Mugabe got $400 million or so in the last few years. 3. This puts people in temptations way, it gets yoinked. 4. Others in the country get pissed off. 5. Leaders arise, arm their followers and try and take the pot o'gold. 6. The current elite fight like rabid dogs to keep their money. 7. The rebels fight like rabid dogs to get the money. 8. They win. Goto 1.
As a result, funding ends up being funnelled to keep the military happy and well armed to protect said pot o'gold. When the rebels win, their people become the army, and nothing changes.
It's a vicious cycle that just gets worse and worse.
You can't have a free market without a free society,
This isn't quite accurate (of course this depends on your definition of free society, I think you mean democracy of some kind. Apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth). If you agree that prosperity is well-nigh impossible for a country at large without some kind of functioning free market (which it is, incidentally, for examples see sub-saharan Africa), it has been suggested, and I strongly agree with this, that prosperity is a pre-requisite for democracy, not the other way around. For democracy to work at all, you have to have a population prosperous enough to start worrying about the state of the country rather than where the next meal is coming from. For further examples, see, again, sub saharan Africa:)
Certainly in the west (I don't know about China) there is an attempt to move away from "number of papers published" * "impact of journal" as a measure.
The new measures I've seen applied tend to use "number of papers not written by you and/or your co-authors that reference your paper" * "impact of journal the paper that references yours is published in".
If your paper is referenced a lot, in high impact journals or conferences, you get a better rating. The downside is that this is more difficult and time-consuming to calculate, so a lot of research centres will fall back on the old way. It's a shame, really, because the pressure to publish devalues many interesting ideas that don't get the time they deserve for the concepts to be brought to an high standard, and generates a lot of mediocre papers. Writing a paper is not a trivial exercise, and it really bugged me when it was treated as such.
"My "blathering on" was to make it clear that no one person can have the expertise to review the entire field"
The same is true of any field, no?
Of course, but you're sidestepping the point, which is that experts from outside climate science as a field have been discouraged by hostile receptions when they've asked questions or made criticisms. This point is anyway tangential to the discussion.
The quote is another way of wording the old cannard that climate scientists claim the "science is settled", is that clear enough for you?
Heh, the disagreement here is that I simply read "the climate change group" as the lobby, which isn't the same as the scientific community, although there is overlap. And some of those have said that the science is settled.
"Highly likely" - has a technical definition in the IPCC reprots it's a specific confidence level.
Indeed it IS a technical term. And it refers to a confidence interval. What I'm saying is that confidence interval is based on literature published on existing climate models, and these models imply that there will be a positive feedback loop once temperature and CO2 levels get above a certain point (the 'tipping point'). That the feedback will be positive is not at all clear, and the evidence that CO2 is a cause and not a symptom is not as clear as the "highly likely" confidence interval implies.
I want it to be clear that I think we do need to reduce CO2 emissions, as I've said elsewhere in this article, although my primary reason for this is that increasing acidification of the ocean will have devastating effects.
Sure Gavin Schmidt's publication list is impressive, but the tone of the realclimate.org blog is not. Discussion is not encouraged, and god help you if you ask a question that runs in any way counter to the prevailing opinion. Just like the rest of the internet, really.
My "blathering on" was to make it clear that no one person can have the expertise to review the entire field, but the multidisciplinary nature of the field is largely unacknowledged and contributions from outside the "internationally recognised" climate scientists, or those working in internationally recognised climate research centres are discouraged.
And you didn't provide context. From the quoted article:
The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’
Indeed, these are facts, supported by measurements.
he attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion.
This, however, is not a fact. It's a theory, based largely on an assumption of a positive feedback loop in the models.
Whatever Lomborgs background, I find it hilarious that you accuse him of a "do nothing" position. Your own link (the second one) is about geo-fucking-engineering. That is, attempting to modify the planetary climate artificially, in case you don't understand. Hardly "do nothing". He also advocates a cost/benefit analysis of any attempted solution. Makes sense, no? And perhaps his real crime. He's an optimist who thinks we can engineer our way out of the problem.
Did I accuse RC of advocating political solutions? I re-read my post several times and didn't spot it.
The graph cited shows a much tighter correlation between temperature and methane. I realise this is a tangent, but I wonder why? Glacial or ice pack melting releasing stores of the gas, or biological processes? Cause or effect?
Actually, that cause or effect question is relevant to CO2 and temperature too. Now that I think of it that's really the core of the whole proponent vs skeptic disagreement (I disregard the fanatics, surely there's room for reasonable debate on causes and effects).
Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.
So some unknown process starts the warming, and then CO2 acts as an amplifier above a certain level. The inital lag is as long as 800 years, according to ice-cores, which seem reasonable data sources. At what point, however, does the crossover occur?
I mean, according to that graph, we're only 3C off the previous interglacial maximums, and due for a dip! I'm not sure runaway warming is the concern here! Joking aside, the time scale of the graph makes it difficult for to see anything other than there is a relationship between temperature, methane, and CO2. That is, or should be, non-controversial.
From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.
If that's true then we're boned since we're already beyong the halfway point in the interglacial warming period, both in time and temperature. If CO2 leads to a positive feedback loop then the planet should be Venusian by now from a previous interglacial peak leading to runaway warming. The global temperatures today should have risen in line with the modelled estimates and in line with CO2 increases, which they haven't (although this last point is over a 10 year period, waaaaaay too short to draw any conclusions from).
Now the problem with a high amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is it traps heat (this may take a while in the same way putting on a jacket takes a few minutes to make your skin warm from your heat source (internal, in you're body's case, it's external in the Earths case))
Except that all the data says that CO2 lags temperature. The AGW model requires positive feedback. Historically, the feedbacks have been negative. Why assume a positive feedback loop will occur now?
Incidentally, the increasing acidification of the oceans is, to my mind, the best reason to cut back on CO2 emissions generally. It's more important that just about any other consequence, and doesn't require runaway warming to occur.
You should read the reply. Consider the first page an introduction - it's actually structured like many scientific publications. Lomborg proceeds to a rebuttal of what he felt were the most important points made by Friel's book. I've checked a few of them (about five) and he has been right each time.
First of all, linking to realclimate.org without providing context is wasting everyone's time. Realclimate is a project run by Gavin Schmidt of GISS, and is very heavily moderated. That's his bag, but it can hardly be considered an unbiased source (particularly as the response to any questions or requests for clarification is sneering). They don't acknowledge that they're working in a complex multidisciplinary field and that people with expertise in methods that they use can have valid criticisms of techniques used. To be a climate scientist you would need expertise in biology, meteorology, solar physics, physics, chemistry, statistics and data analysis, oceanography and geology, amongst others. That's an impressive list, and I submit that the list of people who could rightly claim to be experts in half of them is very, very small. Yet the climate change community seems to react to questions over methods and conclusions by experts in these various fields angrily and defensively, rather than constructively. Some of those studying in the field are not happy about this, such as Prof Atte Korhola, who has some interesting comments on the state of climate science at the moment.
The problem with getting anthropogenic climate change accepted by the general public is we know how bloody complicated the field is, so there will always be problems in the details, and therefore opportunities for questioning. Answering those questions is the whole reason the field exists, no? Climate is a complex system with many, many inputs. Many of these inputs have effects that are under question, or are poorly understood.
The predictions in the IPCC report were largely based off computer models that have questionable predictive power, and are based off data that is assumed to be global but in reality is taken from local data points. We all know that climate is not weather, as weather is a local phenomenon, and these data points are measuring localities. Okay, so we use more. But some of the data points reliabilities are under question, such as the tree-ring data that depends on the assumption that trees are good thermometers, which is, frankly, not supported particularly well by the evidence.
Lomborg does not deny climate change is happening. He even goes further and states that there is an anthropogenic component (which is the real point of contention). His discussion in his books is "What should we do about it". He reckons economists should decide. His response is actually a good read. This seems relatively non-controversial to me. Is the problem that he used the work "skeptical" and "cool" in his book titles?
Before I reply to your comment, let me state, I have 360 and PS3 and have used the Wii at friends' houses.
>One of the major advantages that PSN has over Xbox is the fact that the online play is free.
Actually, it's the ONLY advantage.
I would disagree. It's a major deal for me that the PS3 is so much quieter. The 360 is so loud that when we had both in the house people used the PS3 by preference, and if we wanted to play a game casually, it was always a PS3 game that got played. It also looked nicer:)
>I actually don't play games online a lot, but it's nice that it's there, so that I >can dip in and out of it. It came in VERY handy during Demon's Souls.
And you don't play games online a lot? So how can you really talk about PSN? Demon Souls is an excellent game.
To be fair, PSN is more than just playing games online. I've found it fine for online games and I haven't heard complaints
Game makers would NEVER allow this. Renting a game for 5 pounds? LOL Surely you jest
Particularly for indie games, don't underestimate the attractiveness of a constant stream of income.
You make it sound like PSN is designed just for movie rentals. It involves much more than that. Go on an XBL and you'll see how a better online experience works.
I'm not sure it's $50/£40 better, though! This is a difference of opinion thing. Some people prefer PS, some prefer XBox, and you're unlikely to change either's opinion
The parent is extremely informative. It's a major problem in some areas of China because property development is very short term in terms of direct input into the economy, and leads to property bubbles where property is overvalued and eventually crashes. Add construction as a large percentage of your GDP then you've got the problem we ran into in Ireland when the construction sector collapsed - it was worth something like 25% of GDP and a correspondingly massive amount of tax receipts. When that income went away... well it hasn't been (and isn't) pretty.
The other (and funnier) result is empty cities, as happened in "new" Ordos (This is a video report) on the Mongolian border. A whole empty city was built, and no-one can afford to move to it. No-one lives in it, it exists because "building is good". Baffling!
The sea level rises mentioned in the IPCC reports are measured in centimeters over decades in the worst case scenarios, which isn't exactly the end of the world. Measurements (i.e. the instrumental record) of sea levels is 1.1mm per year steady for the last 20 years. The real dangers of melting glaciers is the effect of (probably localised) changes in the salinity of the water damaging ecosystems.
For myself, bollocks to "doom!" and "end of the world" predictions associated with climate change. The real issue with carbon dioxide production is the acidification of the oceans, and the increase in plankton and algae associated with the increase in CO2. Fish are an important part of the diet for many people all over the world, and we've done well from the ocean's bounty over the years.
Calling it melting is prejudicial (because it implies melting due to warming), it's termed glacial retreat and in most cases, there are valid reasons for this not associated with "Global Warming". For instance, the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are retreating because the rain forest at the bottom was destroyed which drastically reduced the amount of precipitation on the mountain's slopes. Less precipitation == less liquid to freeze, so the water lost to the summer temperatures was simply not replaced.
Interestingly, the cost of replacing the stoves causing the Himalayan pollution (it is believed that most of the soot is not from large scale generation, but from household stoves - individually they're not that significant, but there's a hell of a lot of people in that part of the world) has been estimated at $15 billion. This seems like a good use of resources to me, rather than fantasy schemes like cap and trade.
The problem is that Mass Effect may or may not work on anything earlier than Vista, and figuring out why and/or making it work is next to impossible if you're lucky. If you have Vista (or , I assume, Windows 7) it will work.
Shit, and it should have been made clear, but if you look at the packaging it will say it requires DX10, which was Vista only (XP versions are dirty hacks)
I apologize to be so forthwright, but you have no idea what I know! One of my closest friends was the first to prove that Pond's and Fleishman's research was lacking.
You lisp even in comments?:)
Seriously though, I was always under the impression that they got an effect that they could reproduce but didn't have a clue what it meant, and that's largely what they said. They were subsequently crushed by a huge public media circus (which wasn't fair on anyone and made "cold" fusion a dirty phrase). I do know that subsequently MIT asked for funds to investigate further, and were refused on the not unreasonable grounds that they'd been involved in the rejection of the research.
On the whole affair, even before this hack stole the emails, there were serious questions being raised about techniques used to analyse data, particularly in the field of dendrochronology. Prof Atte Korhola, who is himself a climate scientist (and very much NOT a skeptic) had this to say
when later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of 21st century as an embarrassing chapter in history of science. They will wonder our time, and use it as a warning of how the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten as the actual research topic — climate change — turned into a political and social playground.
More specifically he says (my highlighting)
Another example is a study [he was referring to Kaufman et al (2009)] recently published in the prestigious journal Science. It is concluded in the article that the average temperatures in the Arctic region are much higher now than at any time in the past two thousand years. The result may well be true, but the way the researchers ended up with this conclusion raises questions. Proxies have been included selectively, they have been digested, manipulated, filtered, and combined, for example, data collected from Finland in the past by my own colleagues has even been turned upside down such that the warm periods become cold and vice versa. Normally, this would be considered as a scientific forgery, which has serious consequences.
This has been disproved again and again - most recently in England. It would be more accurate to say "*if* a person has a pre-disposition to psychosis long term abuse of THC *may* statistically increase their chances of psychosis by a non-negligible amount"
You've made the common mistake of confusing programming with Computer Science - they're not the same (I'm assuming that's the CS degree you refer to). They aren't really the same, and the goal of a CS degree is not (or at least should not be) to teach programming. Generally there will be an introduction to programming, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a real language. In fact, some commentators on the whole process suggest that it should specifically NOT be a real language.
By definition, calculus is the mathematics of change, and as such is pretty damn useful in computer science (and a load of other stuff). It's not unreasonable to expect it to turn up in a CS degree (this is particularly true if your CS degree is accredited by an engineering body like the IEEE).
Slashdot Mirror
That was very well said.
I think that the problem here is akin to the the problems with the Gulf of Mexico spill. Some people view it as an engineering problem - it has causes and effects and we need to remove those effects as much as possible, as simply as possible and as quickly as possible. Others view it as a moral question - should we drill at all. The problem with viewing such large issues as moral problems before they've been resolved is that the blame game just gets in the way.
In the case of Climate Change, there are those that view it as an engineering problem. We could quickly cool the earth, simply by pumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, for instance. This is an engineering solution, identify the problem (surface too hot), identify a solution (volcanos cool the atmosphere by putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, sulfur dioxide degrades quickly so if we stop there'll be a relatively quick return to the norm) and identify a mechanism (a pump, hose and balloon). Of course this approach has downsides (such as acid rain). The engineers are optimistic, the belief is that while this is a challenge it is one that can be overcome, the same way as humanity has got over/around/through all problems in our history
Then there are those that view it as a moral question. These people will tell us that we need to reduce world population (without mentioning how because details are dirty), and stop emitting CO2 (with only vague notions of how they'll get their power or transport afterwards). It may well be a moral question, or at least there are certainly questions to answer about how we go forward, but stop stifling debate and research on the goddamn subject. Climate science is a complex multidisciplinary field and the models have many inputs, some of which are not particularly well understood. It's hard, and won't always be right. This is not an underlying fault with the field itself, so you don't need to crucify anyone who disagrees with the details.
The worst are the politicians, who've managed to create a nonsense system of magical money and credits that is completely meaningless yet makes money for those with vested interests. It's actually masterful. I tip my hat while shaking my head. It's also used as a stick to beat anyone who disagrees with them on any reason at all, and as a big lever to bring in massive taxation, none of which goes to, y'know, actually attempt to fix the problem.
Not controversial:
The climate is changing.
It's getting, on average warmer.
The balance of evidence suggest anthropogenic contribution.
Very slightly controversial.
There are factors we don't understand.
It might not be all us.
Controversial:
It's our fault.
There's a tipping point and once we hit it we're fucked.
Mental:
We should all go live in mud huts and knock off anyone who disagrees until we've got to about 50% of the current population.
Give Al Gore all your monies to offset your carbon emissions.
That's retarded.
I have two middle names on my birth certificate, and no-one here in Ireland cares whether I use them or not. In fact, the middle name boxes are marked "optional" on the drivers license and passport application forms. My new passport contains no middle names, because filling them out in immigration forms when travelling is a pain in the ass, although my old passport had one, and the one before that had both, and the old passport was considered enough of a proof of identity to get the new one. Same idea with the drivers license. They already know who I am, as long as I use my real name on official documentation they're not too bothered.
Why be that anal about it? Internally on all these systems you're a number (a passport or PPS number)
good god, don't let the Japanese have first contact! While I've great respect for the Japanese in general, their fascination with tentacles makes the prospect... tricky
Sure, but the problematic areas haven't been the physics, they've been areas like dendrochronology which are more biology (or wishful thinking, depending on who you listen to :) ), and the modeling of the climate systems. It is (or at least should be) non-controversial at this point that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and more CO2 means warmer temperatures. As far as I'm aware the only discussion is whether anthropogenic sources of CO2 are causing a measurable increase in that warming.
The problem is that when you go beyond superficial, statistics are complex, and certain analyses can be tricky, or not applicable even if they look applicable at first glance. There is also the perennial problem of the data that gets fed into those models, and area that's particularly prone to confirmation bias no matter how impartial the team is trying to be.
As far as "correlation does not imply causation", goes, you must also recall that causation requires correlation.
These are difficult issues to resolve. A buttload of statistics isn't much good if you're not using it right :)
There has been extensive reporting that the lack of statisticians in the climate research area is a problem.
Some chap called Wegman did a report for the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) that was rather critical of the lack of statistical expertise, and some of the most consistent complaints about climate research are in the area of statistics.
I'm not an expert and don't have an opinion on this, though!
The US Army justcancelled a similar project although their version was rather smaller than a shipping container, because in testing it didn't meet some of the requirements (i believe it was the IR seeking mode that was problematic) and because it would have cost ~$200k per missile (it costs ~$500k at the moment).
Apparently the technology was 90% ready ,though.
Not sure I like the idea of this. There are too many crazies with access to the kind of money that makes this viable
I must disagree - availability of games is a major reason why linux on the desktop hasn't taken off. It's certainly the only reason I have a windows install at all.
At this point, I buy most of my games through Steam, simply because it has the best offerings of all the electronic distribution channels. The only thing missing from it is some kind of family account that lets you share your games with more than one login. Having it manage patching is dead handy, it's a one stop place for all games, and it allows unlimited downloads so if you lose a partition or your computer blows up, just log in and download again.
Steam praise aside, it is difficult to get people to use Linux for many reasons, but with distributions like Ubuntu it's hardly ease of use that is the major barrier anymore. Most personal e-mail accounts are online now, so it comes down (for the majority of the market) to office apps and games. PC gaming may be less popular now, but if a large proportion of the Steam library of games was available on Linux, you can encourage the younger crowd to use it. They'll be more comfortable with it, and over time that translates into more demand.
Actually, there's a strong argument that the large aid flows are the underlying problem.
It boils down to this.
1. We give lots of money. Billions.
2. The oversight is minimal. For instance, Mugabe got $400 million or so in the last few years.
3. This puts people in temptations way, it gets yoinked.
4. Others in the country get pissed off.
5. Leaders arise, arm their followers and try and take the pot o'gold.
6. The current elite fight like rabid dogs to keep their money.
7. The rebels fight like rabid dogs to get the money.
8. They win. Goto 1.
As a result, funding ends up being funnelled to keep the military happy and well armed to protect said pot o'gold. When the rebels win, their people become the army, and nothing changes.
It's a vicious cycle that just gets worse and worse.
Interesting post, with which I largely agree but:
You can't have a free market without a free society,
This isn't quite accurate (of course this depends on your definition of free society, I think you mean democracy of some kind. Apologies if I'm putting words in your mouth). :)
If you agree that prosperity is well-nigh impossible for a country at large without some kind of functioning free market (which it is, incidentally, for examples see sub-saharan Africa), it has been suggested, and I strongly agree with this, that prosperity is a pre-requisite for democracy, not the other way around. For democracy to work at all, you have to have a population prosperous enough to start worrying about the state of the country rather than where the next meal is coming from. For further examples, see, again, sub saharan Africa
Certainly in the west (I don't know about China) there is an attempt to move away from "number of papers published" * "impact of journal" as a measure.
The new measures I've seen applied tend to use "number of papers not written by you and/or your co-authors that reference your paper" * "impact of journal the paper that references yours is published in".
If your paper is referenced a lot, in high impact journals or conferences, you get a better rating. The downside is that this is more difficult and time-consuming to calculate, so a lot of research centres will fall back on the old way. It's a shame, really, because the pressure to publish devalues many interesting ideas that don't get the time they deserve for the concepts to be brought to an high standard, and generates a lot of mediocre papers. Writing a paper is not a trivial exercise, and it really bugged me when it was treated as such.
The Ur-Quan Masters is a native linux port of Star Control 2, and I've found it largely indistinguishable from the real thing. It's awesome.
"My "blathering on" was to make it clear that no one person can have the expertise to review the entire field"
The same is true of any field, no?
Of course, but you're sidestepping the point, which is that experts from outside climate science as a field have been discouraged by hostile receptions when they've asked questions or made criticisms. This point is anyway tangential to the discussion.
The quote is another way of wording the old cannard that climate scientists claim the "science is settled", is that clear enough for you?
Heh, the disagreement here is that I simply read "the climate change group" as the lobby, which isn't the same as the scientific community, although there is overlap. And some of those have said that the science is settled.
"Highly likely" - has a technical definition in the IPCC reprots it's a specific confidence level.
Indeed it IS a technical term. And it refers to a confidence interval. What I'm saying is that confidence interval is based on literature published on existing climate models, and these models imply that there will be a positive feedback loop once temperature and CO2 levels get above a certain point (the 'tipping point'). That the feedback will be positive is not at all clear, and the evidence that CO2 is a cause and not a symptom is not as clear as the "highly likely" confidence interval implies.
I want it to be clear that I think we do need to reduce CO2 emissions, as I've said elsewhere in this article, although my primary reason for this is that increasing acidification of the ocean will have devastating effects.
Sure Gavin Schmidt's publication list is impressive, but the tone of the realclimate.org blog is not. Discussion is not encouraged, and god help you if you ask a question that runs in any way counter to the prevailing opinion. Just like the rest of the internet, really.
My "blathering on" was to make it clear that no one person can have the expertise to review the entire field, but the multidisciplinary nature of the field is largely unacknowledged and contributions from outside the "internationally recognised" climate scientists, or those working in internationally recognised climate research centres are discouraged.
And you didn't provide context. From the quoted article:
The existence of the greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 (and other GHGs) over the last hundred years and its human cause, and the fact the planet warmed significantly over the 20th Century are not much in doubt. IPCC described these factors as ‘virtually certain’ or ‘unequivocal’
Indeed, these are facts, supported by measurements.
he attribution of the warming over the last 50 years to human activity is also pretty well established – that is ‘highly likely’ and the anticipation that further warming will continue as CO2 levels continue to rise is a well supported conclusion.
This, however, is not a fact. It's a theory, based largely on an assumption of a positive feedback loop in the models.
Whatever Lomborgs background, I find it hilarious that you accuse him of a "do nothing" position. Your own link (the second one) is about geo-fucking-engineering. That is, attempting to modify the planetary climate artificially, in case you don't understand. Hardly "do nothing". He also advocates a cost/benefit analysis of any attempted solution. Makes sense, no? And perhaps his real crime. He's an optimist who thinks we can engineer our way out of the problem.
Did I accuse RC of advocating political solutions? I re-read my post several times and didn't spot it.
The graph cited shows a much tighter correlation between temperature and methane. I realise this is a tangent, but I wonder why? Glacial or ice pack melting releasing stores of the gas, or biological processes? Cause or effect?
Actually, that cause or effect question is relevant to CO2 and temperature too. Now that I think of it that's really the core of the whole proponent vs skeptic disagreement (I disregard the fanatics, surely there's room for reasonable debate on causes and effects).
Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.
So some unknown process starts the warming, and then CO2 acts as an amplifier above a certain level. The inital lag is as long as 800 years, according to ice-cores, which seem reasonable data sources. At what point, however, does the crossover occur?
I mean, according to that graph, we're only 3C off the previous interglacial maximums, and due for a dip! I'm not sure runaway warming is the concern here!
Joking aside, the time scale of the graph makes it difficult for to see anything other than there is a relationship between temperature, methane, and CO2. That is, or should be, non-controversial.
From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.
If that's true then we're boned since we're already beyong the halfway point in the interglacial warming period, both in time and temperature. If CO2 leads to a positive feedback loop then the planet should be Venusian by now from a previous interglacial peak leading to runaway warming. The global temperatures today should have risen in line with the modelled estimates and in line with CO2 increases, which they haven't (although this last point is over a 10 year period, waaaaaay too short to draw any conclusions from).
Now the problem with a high amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is it traps heat (this may take a while in the same way putting on a jacket takes a few minutes to make your skin warm from your heat source (internal, in you're body's case, it's external in the Earths case))
Except that all the data says that CO2 lags temperature. The AGW model requires positive feedback. Historically, the feedbacks have been negative. Why assume a positive feedback loop will occur now?
Incidentally, the increasing acidification of the oceans is, to my mind, the best reason to cut back on CO2 emissions generally. It's more important that just about any other consequence, and doesn't require runaway warming to occur.
You should read the reply. Consider the first page an introduction - it's actually structured like many scientific publications. Lomborg proceeds to a rebuttal of what he felt were the most important points made by Friel's book. I've checked a few of them (about five) and he has been right each time.
First of all, linking to realclimate.org without providing context is wasting everyone's time. Realclimate is a project run by Gavin Schmidt of GISS, and is very heavily moderated. That's his bag, but it can hardly be considered an unbiased source (particularly as the response to any questions or requests for clarification is sneering). They don't acknowledge that they're working in a complex multidisciplinary field and that people with expertise in methods that they use can have valid criticisms of techniques used. To be a climate scientist you would need expertise in biology, meteorology, solar physics, physics, chemistry, statistics and data analysis, oceanography and geology, amongst others. That's an impressive list, and I submit that the list of people who could rightly claim to be experts in half of them is very, very small. Yet the climate change community seems to react to questions over methods and conclusions by experts in these various fields angrily and defensively, rather than constructively. Some of those studying in the field are not happy about this, such as Prof Atte Korhola, who has some interesting comments on the state of climate science at the moment.
The problem with getting anthropogenic climate change accepted by the general public is we know how bloody complicated the field is, so there will always be problems in the details, and therefore opportunities for questioning. Answering those questions is the whole reason the field exists, no? Climate is a complex system with many, many inputs. Many of these inputs have effects that are under question, or are poorly understood.
The predictions in the IPCC report were largely based off computer models that have questionable predictive power, and are based off data that is assumed to be global but in reality is taken from local data points. We all know that climate is not weather, as weather is a local phenomenon, and these data points are measuring localities. Okay, so we use more. But some of the data points reliabilities are under question, such as the tree-ring data that depends on the assumption that trees are good thermometers, which is, frankly, not supported particularly well by the evidence.
Lomborg does not deny climate change is happening. He even goes further and states that there is an anthropogenic component (which is the real point of contention). His discussion in his books is "What should we do about it". He reckons economists should decide. His response is actually a good read. This seems relatively non-controversial to me. Is the problem that he used the work "skeptical" and "cool" in his book titles?
Before I reply to your comment, let me state, I have 360 and PS3 and have used the Wii at friends' houses.
>One of the major advantages that PSN has over Xbox is the fact that the online play is free.
Actually, it's the ONLY advantage.
I would disagree. It's a major deal for me that the PS3 is so much quieter. The 360 is so loud that when we had both in the house people used the PS3 by preference, and if we wanted to play a game casually, it was always a PS3 game that got played. It also looked nicer :)
>I actually don't play games online a lot, but it's nice that it's there, so that I >can dip in and out of it. It came in VERY handy during Demon's Souls.
And you don't play games online a lot? So how can you really talk about PSN? Demon Souls is an excellent game.
To be fair, PSN is more than just playing games online. I've found it fine for online games and I haven't heard complaints
Game makers would NEVER allow this. Renting a game for 5 pounds? LOL Surely you jest
Particularly for indie games, don't underestimate the attractiveness of a constant stream of income.
You make it sound like PSN is designed just for movie rentals. It involves much more than that. Go on an XBL and you'll see how a better online experience works.
I'm not sure it's $50/£40 better, though! This is a difference of opinion thing. Some people prefer PS, some prefer XBox, and you're unlikely to change either's opinion
The parent is extremely informative. It's a major problem in some areas of China because property development is very short term in terms of direct input into the economy, and leads to property bubbles where property is overvalued and eventually crashes. Add construction as a large percentage of your GDP then you've got the problem we ran into in Ireland when the construction sector collapsed - it was worth something like 25% of GDP and a correspondingly massive amount of tax receipts. When that income went away... well it hasn't been (and isn't) pretty.
The other (and funnier) result is empty cities, as happened in "new" Ordos (This is a video report) on the Mongolian border. A whole empty city was built, and no-one can afford to move to it. No-one lives in it, it exists because "building is good". Baffling!
Hear, hear!
The sea level rises mentioned in the IPCC reports are measured in centimeters over decades in the worst case scenarios, which isn't exactly the end of the world.
Measurements (i.e. the instrumental record) of sea levels is 1.1mm per year steady for the last 20 years. The real dangers of melting glaciers is the effect of (probably localised) changes in the salinity of the water damaging ecosystems.
For myself, bollocks to "doom!" and "end of the world" predictions associated with climate change. The real issue with carbon dioxide production is the acidification of the oceans, and the increase in plankton and algae associated with the increase in CO2. Fish are an important part of the diet for many people all over the world, and we've done well from the ocean's bounty over the years.
Calling it melting is prejudicial (because it implies melting due to warming), it's termed glacial retreat and in most cases, there are valid reasons for this not associated with "Global Warming". For instance, the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are retreating because the rain forest at the bottom was destroyed which drastically reduced the amount of precipitation on the mountain's slopes. Less precipitation == less liquid to freeze, so the water lost to the summer temperatures was simply not replaced.
Interestingly, the cost of replacing the stoves causing the Himalayan pollution (it is believed that most of the soot is not from large scale generation, but from household stoves - individually they're not that significant, but there's a hell of a lot of people in that part of the world) has been estimated at $15 billion. This seems like a good use of resources to me, rather than fantasy schemes like cap and trade.
The problem is that Mass Effect may or may not work on anything earlier than Vista, and figuring out why and/or making it work is next to impossible if you're lucky. If you have Vista (or , I assume, Windows 7) it will work.
Shit, and it should have been made clear, but if you look at the packaging it will say it requires DX10, which was Vista only (XP versions are dirty hacks)
I apologize to be so forthwright, but you have no idea what I know! One of my closest friends was the first to prove that Pond's and Fleishman's research was lacking.
You lisp even in comments? :)
Seriously though, I was always under the impression that they got an effect that they could reproduce but didn't have a clue what it meant, and that's largely what they said. They were subsequently crushed by a huge public media circus (which wasn't fair on anyone and made "cold" fusion a dirty phrase). I do know that subsequently MIT asked for funds to investigate further, and were refused on the not unreasonable grounds that they'd been involved in the rejection of the research.
On the whole affair, even before this hack stole the emails, there were serious questions being raised about techniques used to analyse data, particularly in the field of dendrochronology. Prof Atte Korhola, who is himself a climate scientist (and very much NOT a skeptic) had this to say
when later generations learn about climate science, they will classify the beginning of 21st century as an embarrassing chapter in history of science. They will wonder our time, and use it as a warning of how the core values and criteria of science were allowed little by little to be forgotten as the actual research topic — climate change — turned into a political and social playground.
More specifically he says (my highlighting)
Another example is a study [he was referring to Kaufman et al (2009)] recently published in the prestigious journal Science. It is concluded in the article that the average temperatures in the Arctic region are much higher now than at any time in the past two thousand years. The result may well be true, but the way the researchers ended up with this conclusion raises questions. Proxies have been included selectively, they have been digested, manipulated, filtered, and combined, for example, data collected from Finland in the past by my own colleagues has even been turned upside down such that the warm periods become cold and vice versa. Normally, this would be considered as a scientific forgery, which has serious consequences.
long term abuse of THC can cause psychosis.
This has been disproved again and again - most recently in England. It would be more accurate to say "*if* a person has a pre-disposition to psychosis long term abuse of THC *may* statistically increase their chances of psychosis by a non-negligible amount"
You've made the common mistake of confusing programming with Computer Science - they're not the same (I'm assuming that's the CS degree you refer to). They aren't really the same, and the goal of a CS degree is not (or at least should not be) to teach programming. Generally there will be an introduction to programming, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a real language. In fact, some commentators on the whole process suggest that it should specifically NOT be a real language.
By definition, calculus is the mathematics of change, and as such is pretty damn useful in computer science (and a load of other stuff). It's not unreasonable to expect it to turn up in a CS degree (this is particularly true if your CS degree is accredited by an engineering body like the IEEE).