Maybe he (the actual administrator) wanted access to it when he was at work? Not setting a password if you've done that does seem incredible though, I agree. But that was what the "you'll (sic) be surprised..." comment was in response to.
If I'm reading that correctly, and they broke into a machine with poor security.
On reflection I'm not reading it correctly. What this probably means is they arrested the owner, took over the physical box, and just left it running to see who was using it. But the point stands. Not their responsibility to fix up the villain's poor security. Indeed, if this what happened, one might imagine that miminal-to-no inteferrence with how the box was running would be an operational imperative.
Are you (or he, i haven't read his comment) trying to say that mysql was accessible from the outside to arbitrary connections directly? I find that pretty hard to believe.
It appears to be what he (or someone claiming to be him) is saying, or am I misreading him. For your benefit, I'll quote his comment in its entirety:
@killjoy - you're absolutely correct, it would just be a matter of punching in SQL statements once you've managed to connect to MySQL. This wouldn't be SQL injection, but rather just plain SQL query execution. I guess in explaining that to Asher the definition got skewed. Also, according to what we were presented, the AFP commandeered this server as part of an investigation - so it may not necessarily have been a honeypot per se.
@k@icolo - you'll be surprised, its just human nature. It could easily have happened to security folks (such as us) as well - especially if we're not vigilant.
@Luke | Melbourne - the point of the 4corners exercise was to demonstrate what would happen in the scenario where a wireless AP was not encrypting traffic - you may be using WPA2 but a lot of people aren't, nor would they know how to enable it.
Posted By: Shaon Diwakar | HackLabs - August 18, 2009, 10:00PM
How do you read that?
Note also that he indicates that this was not an AFP machine, or a machine normally administered by the AFP, but a machine "comandeered" (which on reflection probably means confiscated rather than cracked) by the AFP.
The article is wrong. Quoting from (again!) from the message left in the discussion by the quoted security dude in response to someone questioning whether this really was SQL injection:
... you're absolutely correct, it would just be a matter of punching in SQL statements once you've managed to connect to MySQL. This wouldn't be SQL injection, but rather just plain SQL query execution. I guess in explaining that to Asher the definition got skewed.
The journalist (Asher Moses) simply got it wrong. It happens.
Does the idea of a recursive honeypot sound entirely ridiculous?
It was not a honeypot, it was not even an AFP machine. Read down the discussion in TFA. Shaon Diwakar, the security expert quoted in the article, responding to another poster explains that he was misquoted by the journalist (re. SQL injection), and explains the status of the machine under question.
... according to what we were presented, the AFP commandeered this server as part of an investigation - so it may not necessarily have been a honeypot per se
[my emphasis]
Which sounds the AFP took over a machine belonging to someone who also forgot to set their mysql password. If I'm reading that correctly, and they broke into a machine with poor security, it's probably not in their job description to fix up the victim's mysql password. So no, I doubt if anyone (in the AFP) will be sacked here.
Sorry, but I think I undertand quite well: you said that doubting the warming comes from human perturbation (release of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2) is not reasonable. To say that, you need to trust the current climate models, because it is using a model that you can discern between various contributions to global temperature change and identify the CO2 release from fossil fuel burning as the main cause. Without models, all you can say is that global temperature has risen (especially during the 1990-2000 decade) and that atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising too. Not too bad, but not enough to link the two by a causality relation and certainly not to make prediction about future global temperature...
No, in fact we do not need to rely on climate models to make this connection. We can rely on either a carbon audit, or carbon isotope studies. We have both.
In the first place there is the fact of the sheer volume of CO2 that has been liberated by our use of fossil fuels. To argue that-- 1) YES we have released ca. 500 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1850. [Incidentally, an amount, which in the absence of oceanic and biological re-absorption would be sufficient to raise the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to ca. 500ppm.] 2) YES the concentration of C02 has increased from ca. 280ppm to 380ppm over that same period of time [and only to 380ppm due to the aforementioned re-absorption. Arguably we need to rely on "models" to understand why the increase hasn't been so large (also note that raising the ocean concentration of CO2 isn't exactly desirable either)]. BUT 3) NO, there is no causal relationship between the two --seems, in the complete absence of an explanation of where the CO2 we released went to, or where the CO2 that has increased the atmopsheric (and indeed oceanic) concentrations came from, to be untenable at best.
Secondly, biogenic sources of carbon, (wood, fossil fuels) have a C(12)/C(13) isotope ratio far lower than that of general atmospheric CO2. By the end of last century dendochronology allowed a highly accurate determination of atmospheric the carbon isotope ratios over the last 10,000 years. The ratio is now lower (ie. carbon sourced from burning fossil fuels and wood) than at any time in that period, and the ratio began a sharp at exactly the same time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations began to rise (the mid C19th). In other words the increased atmospheric C02 comes complete with a label reading "I come from fossil fuel consumption or land clearing." Moreover, studies of corals show exactly the same changes occuring to oceanic carbon.
Either of these should be enough to move from correlation to causation. Together they are more than conclusive. So to sum up. The anthropogenic nature of atmos. CO2 increases has been established a) beyond any reasonable doubt and b) without reference to climate simulation models.
I mentioned 2005 because, from most the global temperature curves I have seen, the nice exponential or power curve that fit 1990-2000 data and is characteristic of IPCC-reviewed models does not seems to fit the data. Global temperature seems to become flat, or even go downward. Not time enough to be sure, as a running mean of 5 years is needed to get somwhat smooth curves, but the upward trend is much less convincing now that it was 5 years ago...
Not enough time? On an instrumental temperate record of 150 years and an ice-core record several 10,000, you think? You seem like a reasonable enough fellow, surely you don't want to be seen in public proclaiming the significance of a mere 4 or 5 years of data over the entire record? Not in public?
The only question here is, to what level of (statistical) signifcance has the "trend become flat." Looking at a curve that fits the 1990-2000 data is meaningless. If anyone shows you one, run away! If anyone shows you a curve of data from 2005-2009, run away! If the curve does not go back at least to the beginning of the instrumental record (1850), that person
Look I'm frustrated with these guys too. I can understand the temptation to want, simply to shut people up. However I can't stress enough how deeply inappropriate it is to moderate someone as a troll for honestly held personal opinions (unless perhaps they scattergun them all over discussions with robot repetativeness, in which case 'Redundant' or 'Offtopic' would be more appropriate.)
Gkay may be wrong. But he* has a right to express his opinion regardless. Beyond that this kind of moderation is totatlly unnecessary. Wrong opinions can be met with facts, data, links to reputable sources of information and yes even humour and sarcasm. I'm not above ridiculing my interlocutor, obviously, but this really crosses a line that should not be. It is outright censorship! As such it is also counterproductive, it merely fuels a sense of persecution and conspiracy.
The unfortunate thing about Global Warming® is that the data is extrapolated backward then forward. It looks great in a research paper, but I'm sayin' we're going to need a good, solid 1,000 years (or more) of undiluted raw empirical data before every last skeptic is put to bed.
There's this branch of maths called 'statistics.' One of the thing stats can do for us is reveal, within limits of confidence, whether there are trends in noisy data. As of 2007 the warming trend was highly significant (at an alpha-level of 0.01). If we get a good 20 years of lower global temperatures, one after the other, that significance will vanish. We should all be happy if that occurs. Since it would fly in the face of what physics naively (ie. in the absence of specific knowledge about possible feedback mechanisms) tells us about the effect of gases of known greenhouse forcing potential in planetary atmospheres (and again we know we are augmenting these), this would be most unexpected. That should make our happiness all the greater. It would be like winning the lottery.
If you were planning for financial security in your retirement, would you think it wiser to begin investing now, even in the knowledge that there is a real risk that any investment will not pay off, or would it be wiser to hope that between now and your retirement you will win the lottery? Here you are making that choice, not only on your own behalf, but for all your neighbours.
Look, doubt and skepticism are healthy and of importance in the sciences. Indeed without all the skeptical analysis which scientists like Lindzen contributed to this debate during the 80s and 90s, our state of knowledge in regard to AGW would not be nearly as robust as it is now. But there is a point past which doubt ceases to be either healthy or skeptical and becomes something quite different. If we ignore the very serious concerns raised by our best science and maths for the next 1000 years, as a species, we deserved to "be put to bed."
Really? Then I guess that my doubts are not reasonable
You guess correctly.
and I should not worry that IPCC numerical models predictions
You misunderstand. This has nothing to do with models or predictions. And what is this "IPCC numerical model" that you speak of? Surely the IPCC relies on models external to it, such a GISS?
It may have been beyond reasonable doubts until about 2005.
Unlike the OP you've got no class at all! No formal Truth, logical or empirical, just lies!
The Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007 found:
"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
My emphasis. "Very likely" is defined as >95% confidence. Perhaps you are arguing about the limits of "reasonability?"
... the recent scientific advances and newest global data are not so supportive of the idea that man-produced CO2 is responsible for the bulk of global warming.
What "advances"? Which "global data"? Do you just make this stuff up as you go along, or is there some kind of denialist RSS feed that you rely on? [The link is to forstall someone trying to tell that I should call people who uncritically swallow this stuff... cough... 'skeptics,' not 'denialists.']
In any case the Fifth Assessment is now under preparation. So perhaps we should wait until the people who actually know what they are talking about and follow all the peer-reviewed literature (both good and bad) closely have had their say before we jump to conclusions about what the "recent" science has to say.
In any case I prefer to see ignorance being fostered with much greater skill than you have managed here. Sorry, you fail!
That's a tautology much like "water may or may not be wet," so by definition it's logically true. "Global warming is happening." That's a statement of scientific fact, it's empirically true.
... we don't exactly know what is causing it...
We don't know exactly, however it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that human activity is a major contributor.
... and we definitely can't stop it
Up to that point this was such a beautiful example of agnatology relying on nothing but formally True statements. Why did you have to ruin it? How very disappointing!
Even if you were more right, I'd rather side with him since he can spell.
What was being corrected was ISP for DNS. I don't believe the presence of an apostrophe was the issue the poster was addressing. If you choose to believe a message based on the correctness of punctuation, or even spelling, rather than examining the truth of its (how tempted I was to write it's just to annoy you!) semantic content, you are systematically deluding yourself.
Otherwise well informed people make spelling mistakes. Highly intelligent people make spelling mistakes. People who know how to spell make typos. People who are on the losing side of an argument clutching at straws invest such mistakes with an importance they do not possess.
He isnt saying poor design. He is saying there are a whole lot of traits that would have had/have zero reproductive advantage, yet are clearly evident in modern animals.
The problem here the whole notion of "reproductive advantage" which gets evolution arse-end round. Rather we should be looking for reproductive disadvantages. The real question is "will this change increase the chances of the animal dying before it has had a change to reproduce."
My example is the elephant. The first animals (presumably like a pig) had a short nose. Some random member of the species gets born with a slightly longer nose. Not much mind you, because they cant have very much variation in only one generation, so this nose is barely noticeable to be longer, yet it has so much reproductive advantage that generations later the short snout has evolved to a long trunk? It doesnt make sense.
A great example. Will the long nose kill the animal before it has a chance to mate? No. Make sense now?
If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot, and consider it less an act of trolling but one of encouraging discussion, then encouraging thoughtful posts creates an opportunity for the student to have his beliefs challenged and subsequently shaped. Only through adversity do people really learn who they are.
Unusually, I actually agree with you on this point.
I guess the BadThing(tm) here is the lack of disclosure. It's astroturfing. The organised and mandatory nature of the posts fraudulently create the impression that anti-scientific views are far more common than they are. This could be cured by proper disclosure. I wonder, however, if an honest student wrote "Diclaimer: I'm writing this post as part of my course requirements for my...," whether this would impact on their mark. I can't say, but I hope not, because that would be requiring Christians to engage in ethically unsound practices.
Besides, we're talking about Science here, not "Biblical Creationism" as such.
You are either being disingenuous or you don't understand the aims of the ID movement. Some text from the exam question quoted in TFA makes this explicit: "Sketch out a 20-year plan for defeating scientific materialism and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered..."
Quite apart from the (rather interesting IMHO) question of whether there is some "intelligence" to the "design" of the universe, the ID movement is unambiguously part of the War on Science.
Violent crime is behaviour. We are talking about violent crime. Can you complete the syllogism?
We're talking about a genetic abnormality that correlates with behavior
You just said you are not talking about behaviour and here you are talking about something correlating with behaviour. What we are talking about is behaviour, a brain abnormality (not necessarily genetic) and the possible connection between the two in regard to gross statistics of a race's alleged propensity to that behaviour.
There's a subtle but important difference.
LOL. Nice try sunshine.
And I reiterate, assuming there's even a chance that socioeconomic conditions could have anything to do with a genetic trait...
Don't be so dull!. This misunderstanding here has already been corrected once. Nobody here is assuming that socio-economic status determines genetics. Although the clear implication of the your statement, namely that genetics cannot determine socio-economic status, seems less clear. But I'm guessing you didn't actually mean that when you wrote it, did you?
When I write about "separat[ing] neuroantomical effects from cultural ones" I'm in fact assuming that they are separable. That if the data were normalised against socio-economic status, it might actually move closer to revealing a racial propensity to violence. That a genetic basis for such violence is, at least logically, possible. What is difficult about this?
If something seems to you "absurd on the face of it" that should be a strong sign to you that you have failed to read what was written, or that you have failed to understand what was written.
... betrays not only a strong liberal bias...
OK, so now I see what's clouding your thinking. This is a political question for you, not a scientific one. So you are arguing against some imagined "liberal," not against me. Aha! And therefor you don't need to read what I've written or make any effort to understand what you read. You simply argue against an imagined opponent to whom you deliberately ascribe indefensible statements. Let me try.
Really it's clear that if we sterilize all black children at birth we would eventually live in a crime-free world. Quicker still would be drowning them at birth.
Oh look, you're preaching genocide!
It's not nice, is it? So can we stick to what is actually written and stop inventing stuff to argue against?
... but also a very weak understanding of genetics.
I'm not a geneticist, but I do have formal training inter alia in neurosciences (my first degree was a Psych/Pharm major). You can rest assured that I'm not espousing some kind of hold-our Lamarkianism here. If anything you have read here leads you to believe that I'm assuming that genetics are determined by socio-economic conditions, then you have clearly misread what was written. Is that clear?
You should also know that I'm not arguing from some predefined political position (as you apparently are) but from the point of view of hard science. My original objection comes from scurrilous misuse of some (unreferenced) data. Just yesterday I read something in the paper about the top 10 baby names (here in Australia). They were good old-fashioned names like 'Jack.' Along with this list was a statement that this showed that "Gen Y is more conservative in its choice of names for children." Now how, short of some other metric, does a list of the top 10 names shown anything of the sort?! Or does my objection to this error of thinking constitute "liberal bias?"
It is evident that you have not received any formal training in experimental design, especially with regard to separating nature from nuture. You are ignorant even of the necessi
You're assuming there's a socioeconomic basis for genetic disabilities.
Quite the opposite! What I'm doing is not assuming that there is any genetic basis for behaviour which may be more prevalent in ethnic groups which are also socio-econmically disadvantaged. You're failing to grok something very fundamental here.
That remains to be seen [in response to "the null hypotesis is..."]
No it doesn't, that is the null hypotesis when you are investigating the question of whether a greater propensity to some behaviour X among a certain ethnic/social grouping has a physiological/genetic basis.
At this point, we don't know what, if any, relation there is between ethnicity and this deformity. There may not be any.
At least not any physiological relation... that's the gist of what I'm saying.
But to state that there can't be any...
Who stated that?! What I asked for was whether the data (which for the sake of argument we'll assume is true) had been normalised against socio-economic status. Hopefully by now the importance of doing so "in terms of this discussion" is beginning to dawn on you.
In terms of this discussion, that doesn't really matter.
In terms of this discussion it is of vital importance to separate neuroantomical effects from cultural ones.
... would be interesting to see if this abnormality was more or less prevalent in different ethnic groups.
You could only establish that the genetic factors for this ethnicity are involved in one of two ways 1) normalise for socio-economic status (and any other likely causative factors which are unduly associated with particular ethnic groups), or 2) post-mortem brain analysis.
... individuals in those groups could receive additional screening at birth.
It is at the level of the individual that prejudice masking as science will incurr an unwarranted finacial cost. Remember the null hypothesis, the ethnicity per se is irrelevant in determinign whether any particular individual will suffer from this impairment or not.
The statistical data shows that violence -- especially, violent crime -- is disproportionately committed by African-Americans and Africans (in Africa).
Is that before or after the data has been normalised against socio-economic status?
Go back and read Bush's speech about why we needed to remove Saddam Hussein from power. WMDs were only one of many reasons given.
It was clear at the time that Bush had a unshakeable emotional attachment to the idea of invading Iraq. He was going to invade no matter what, even as Hussein was making concessions. So naturally there were many "reasons" given, it's just that the WMD idea is that one that found most traction domestically, so that's the one they ran with.
Why he actually invaded Iraq is something probably only his therapist (were he wise enough to have had one) would know. Maybe it had something to do with trying to succeed where Daddy "failed." Of course Daddy didn't fail, but let's just forget about the Bush who did a fairly good job as President.
It is sad that you see Freedom of Expression, one of the Human Rights, as a privilege that can be taken away instead of an inalienable right.
But Freedom of Expression clearly can be taken away (or not conceded in the first place). Try going to China and publically advocating for the rights of Tibetans and Urghurs.
The very concept of an 'inalienable right' is an ahistorical fairytale. 'Rights' are concessions that, for the most part, have had to be pried out of the hands of those who hold power. To consider them natural and inaliable, though it can be inspiring, can also be to take them for granted and to invite complacency in holding power to account.
By your logic, "r u going 2 da store" is properly formed English.
Gramatically it is a properly formed English sentence. Although the orthography is non-traditional, it's readable to most English readers. Moreover, it could be an appropriate way to communicate a message in a medium requiring parsimony, as for instance when sending text messages on mobile (cell) phones.
This example does not seem to impugn OP's logic, his aesthetics perhaps...
At least as I, and many others use them, in the context of AGW, these words have different meanings (though sometimes the same individuals can be both). A skeptic is someone who has a good handle on the issues but demands better proof. So back in the 90s the skeptics were the scientists who raised objections like heat islands, measurement problems etc. Skeptics have a largely positive influence on the developement of the science.
A denialist on the other hand is simply someone who wants to deny an established 'fact' (inasmuch as Science, or indeed History, can generate 'facts'). Rather than relying on science they rely on rhetoric, propagandistic devices, they recirculate (often unknowingly) proofs long since debunked. Someone who turns up with a graph of historical temperatures with all figures from 1850-1988 expunged is a denialist. More often than not denialists actually believe what they say, being themselves the victims of disinformation campaigns.
The problem with referring to denialists as 'skeptics,' is that in general they exhibit a complete lack of doubt in regard to talking points which support their side. The level of gullability exhibited by most denialists is so extreme that to call them skeptics would stretch it's meaning to breaking point.
Denialist is clearly an emotionally loaded word designed to evoke thoughts of Holocaust deniers.
Well holocaust deniers are generally called that, not denialists. But clearly they are engaged in very similar activities, perhaps if the association is made, it is not entirely undeserved. Perhaps you could avoid this connotation by using the word 'contrarian' (importing a whole new set of connotations) instead. But if you refer to most denialists as skeptics, you are no longer speaking English.
Since global warming is the main change currently happening to our climate, attributing other changes to global warming is often an acceptable first hypothesis, at least if there's a known mechanism that could potentially link the two.
Well the "known mechanism" is probably a good thing to have before you move from hunch to public announcement.
Slashdot Mirror
I just find it dumbfounding that anyone would.
Maybe he (the actual administrator) wanted access to it when he was at work? Not setting a password if you've done that does seem incredible though, I agree. But that was what the "you'll (sic) be surprised ..." comment was in response to.
If I'm reading that correctly, and they broke into a machine with poor security.
On reflection I'm not reading it correctly. What this probably means is they arrested the owner, took over the physical box, and just left it running to see who was using it. But the point stands. Not their responsibility to fix up the villain's poor security. Indeed, if this what happened, one might imagine that miminal-to-no inteferrence with how the box was running would be an operational imperative.
Are you (or he, i haven't read his comment) trying to say that mysql was accessible from the outside to arbitrary connections directly? I find that pretty hard to believe.
It appears to be what he (or someone claiming to be him) is saying, or am I misreading him. For your benefit, I'll quote his comment in its entirety:
@killjoy - you're absolutely correct, it would just be a matter of punching in SQL statements once you've managed to connect to MySQL. This wouldn't be SQL injection, but rather just plain SQL query execution. I guess in explaining that to Asher the definition got skewed. Also, according to what we were presented, the AFP commandeered this server as part of an investigation - so it may not necessarily have been a honeypot per se.
@k@icolo - you'll be surprised, its just human nature. It could easily have happened to security folks (such as us) as well - especially if we're not vigilant.
@Luke | Melbourne - the point of the 4corners exercise was to demonstrate what would happen in the scenario where a wireless AP was not encrypting traffic - you may be using WPA2 but a lot of people aren't, nor would they know how to enable it.
Posted By: Shaon Diwakar | HackLabs - August 18, 2009, 10:00PM
How do you read that?
Note also that he indicates that this was not an AFP machine, or a machine normally administered by the AFP, but a machine "comandeered" (which on reflection probably means confiscated rather than cracked) by the AFP.
The article states they just used SQL injection
The article is wrong. Quoting from (again!) from the message left in the discussion by the quoted security dude in response to someone questioning whether this really was SQL injection:
The journalist (Asher Moses) simply got it wrong. It happens.
Does the idea of a recursive honeypot sound entirely ridiculous?
It was not a honeypot, it was not even an AFP machine. Read down the discussion in TFA. Shaon Diwakar, the security expert quoted in the article, responding to another poster explains that he was misquoted by the journalist (re. SQL injection), and explains the status of the machine under question.
[my emphasis]
Which sounds the AFP took over a machine belonging to someone who also forgot to set their mysql password. If I'm reading that correctly, and they broke into a machine with poor security, it's probably not in their job description to fix up the victim's mysql password. So no, I doubt if anyone (in the AFP) will be sacked here.
Sorry, but I think I undertand quite well: you said that doubting the warming comes from human perturbation (release of greenhouse gases, mainly CO2) is not reasonable. To say that, you need to trust the current climate models, because it is using a model that you can discern between various contributions to global temperature change and identify the CO2 release from fossil fuel burning as the main cause. Without models, all you can say is that global temperature has risen (especially during the 1990-2000 decade) and that atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising too. Not too bad, but not enough to link the two by a causality relation and certainly not to make prediction about future global temperature...
No, in fact we do not need to rely on climate models to make this connection. We can rely on either a carbon audit, or carbon isotope studies. We have both.
In the first place there is the fact of the sheer volume of CO2 that has been liberated by our use of fossil fuels. To argue that-- 1) YES we have released ca. 500 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1850. [Incidentally, an amount, which in the absence of oceanic and biological re-absorption would be sufficient to raise the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to ca. 500ppm.] 2) YES the concentration of C02 has increased from ca. 280ppm to 380ppm over that same period of time [and only to 380ppm due to the aforementioned re-absorption. Arguably we need to rely on "models" to understand why the increase hasn't been so large (also note that raising the ocean concentration of CO2 isn't exactly desirable either)]. BUT 3) NO, there is no causal relationship between the two --seems, in the complete absence of an explanation of where the CO2 we released went to, or where the CO2 that has increased the atmopsheric (and indeed oceanic) concentrations came from, to be untenable at best.
Secondly, biogenic sources of carbon, (wood, fossil fuels) have a C(12)/C(13) isotope ratio far lower than that of general atmospheric CO2. By the end of last century dendochronology allowed a highly accurate determination of atmospheric the carbon isotope ratios over the last 10,000 years. The ratio is now lower (ie. carbon sourced from burning fossil fuels and wood) than at any time in that period, and the ratio began a sharp at exactly the same time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations began to rise (the mid C19th). In other words the increased atmospheric C02 comes complete with a label reading "I come from fossil fuel consumption or land clearing." Moreover, studies of corals show exactly the same changes occuring to oceanic carbon.
Either of these should be enough to move from correlation to causation. Together they are more than conclusive. So to sum up. The anthropogenic nature of atmos. CO2 increases has been established a) beyond any reasonable doubt and b) without reference to climate simulation models.
I mentioned 2005 because, from most the global temperature curves I have seen, the nice exponential or power curve that fit 1990-2000 data and is characteristic of IPCC-reviewed models does not seems to fit the data. Global temperature seems to become flat, or even go downward. Not time enough to be sure, as a running mean of 5 years is needed to get somwhat smooth curves, but the upward trend is much less convincing now that it was 5 years ago...
Not enough time? On an instrumental temperate record of 150 years and an ice-core record several 10,000, you think? You seem like a reasonable enough fellow, surely you don't want to be seen in public proclaiming the significance of a mere 4 or 5 years of data over the entire record? Not in public?
The only question here is, to what level of (statistical) signifcance has the "trend become flat." Looking at a curve that fits the 1990-2000 data is meaningless. If anyone shows you one, run away! If anyone shows you a curve of data from 2005-2009, run away! If the curve does not go back at least to the beginning of the instrumental record (1850), that person
So if someone posted your address and a picture of your house, this is stalking?
In what context? If this is done as part of continuing campaing of following you around and taking pictures of everything you do, then obviously, yes.
I really need to speak with Yellow pages and Google maps, They have a few things to explain.....
So you think Yellow pages and Google maps are specifically focussing on you ... hmm very interesting. So, ... tell me about your mother.
'Troll' does not mean 'Wrong' or 'I disagree'.
Look I'm frustrated with these guys too. I can understand the temptation to want, simply to shut people up. However I can't stress enough how deeply inappropriate it is to moderate someone as a troll for honestly held personal opinions (unless perhaps they scattergun them all over discussions with robot repetativeness, in which case 'Redundant' or 'Offtopic' would be more appropriate.)
Gkay may be wrong. But he* has a right to express his opinion regardless. Beyond that this kind of moderation is totatlly unnecessary. Wrong opinions can be met with facts, data, links to reputable sources of information and yes even humour and sarcasm. I'm not above ridiculing my interlocutor, obviously, but this really crosses a line that should not be. It is outright censorship! As such it is also counterproductive, it merely fuels a sense of persecution and conspiracy.
We need to inform people, not to censor them!
*my apologies if he is a she
It's usually a bad idea to quarrel with somebody's religion
Oh the delicious irony!
The unfortunate thing about Global Warming® is that the data is extrapolated backward then forward. It looks great in a research paper, but I'm sayin' we're going to need a good, solid 1,000 years (or more) of undiluted raw empirical data before every last skeptic is put to bed.
There's this branch of maths called 'statistics.' One of the thing stats can do for us is reveal, within limits of confidence, whether there are trends in noisy data. As of 2007 the warming trend was highly significant (at an alpha-level of 0.01). If we get a good 20 years of lower global temperatures, one after the other, that significance will vanish. We should all be happy if that occurs. Since it would fly in the face of what physics naively (ie. in the absence of specific knowledge about possible feedback mechanisms) tells us about the effect of gases of known greenhouse forcing potential in planetary atmospheres (and again we know we are augmenting these), this would be most unexpected. That should make our happiness all the greater. It would be like winning the lottery.
If you were planning for financial security in your retirement, would you think it wiser to begin investing now, even in the knowledge that there is a real risk that any investment will not pay off, or would it be wiser to hope that between now and your retirement you will win the lottery? Here you are making that choice, not only on your own behalf, but for all your neighbours.
Look, doubt and skepticism are healthy and of importance in the sciences. Indeed without all the skeptical analysis which scientists like Lindzen contributed to this debate during the 80s and 90s, our state of knowledge in regard to AGW would not be nearly as robust as it is now. But there is a point past which doubt ceases to be either healthy or skeptical and becomes something quite different. If we ignore the very serious concerns raised by our best science and maths for the next 1000 years, as a species, we deserved to "be put to bed."
Really? Then I guess that my doubts are not reasonable
You guess correctly.
and I should not worry that IPCC numerical models predictions
You misunderstand. This has nothing to do with models or predictions. And what is this "IPCC numerical model" that you speak of? Surely the IPCC relies on models external to it, such a GISS?
It may have been beyond reasonable doubts until about 2005.
Unlike the OP you've got no class at all! No formal Truth, logical or empirical, just lies!
The Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007 found:
"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
My emphasis. "Very likely" is defined as >95% confidence. Perhaps you are arguing about the limits of "reasonability?"
What "advances"? Which "global data"? Do you just make this stuff up as you go along, or is there some kind of denialist RSS feed that you rely on? [The link is to forstall someone trying to tell that I should call people who uncritically swallow this stuff ... cough ... 'skeptics,' not 'denialists.']
In any case the Fifth Assessment is now under preparation. So perhaps we should wait until the people who actually know what they are talking about and follow all the peer-reviewed literature (both good and bad) closely have had their say before we jump to conclusions about what the "recent" science has to say.
In any case I prefer to see ignorance being fostered with much greater skill than you have managed here. Sorry, you fail!
Global warming may or may not be happening.
That's a tautology much like "water may or may not be wet," so by definition it's logically true. "Global warming is happening." That's a statement of scientific fact, it's empirically true.
We don't know exactly, however it has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that human activity is a major contributor.
Up to that point this was such a beautiful example of agnatology relying on nothing but formally True statements. Why did you have to ruin it? How very disappointing!
Even if you were more right, I'd rather side with him since he can spell.
What was being corrected was ISP for DNS. I don't believe the presence of an apostrophe was the issue the poster was addressing. If you choose to believe a message based on the correctness of punctuation, or even spelling, rather than examining the truth of its (how tempted I was to write it's just to annoy you!) semantic content, you are systematically deluding yourself.
Otherwise well informed people make spelling mistakes. Highly intelligent people make spelling mistakes. People who know how to spell make typos. People who are on the losing side of an argument clutching at straws invest such mistakes with an importance they do not possess.
He isnt saying poor design. He is saying there are a whole lot of traits that would have had/have zero reproductive advantage, yet are clearly evident in modern animals.
The problem here the whole notion of "reproductive advantage" which gets evolution arse-end round. Rather we should be looking for reproductive disadvantages. The real question is "will this change increase the chances of the animal dying before it has had a change to reproduce."
My example is the elephant. The first animals (presumably like a pig) had a short nose. Some random member of the species gets born with a slightly longer nose. Not much mind you, because they cant have very much variation in only one generation, so this nose is barely noticeable to be longer, yet it has so much reproductive advantage that generations later the short snout has evolved to a long trunk? It doesnt make sense.
A great example. Will the long nose kill the animal before it has a chance to mate? No. Make sense now?
If you take the act of posting on a message board, especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot, and consider it less an act of trolling but one of encouraging discussion, then encouraging thoughtful posts creates an opportunity for the student to have his beliefs challenged and subsequently shaped. Only through adversity do people really learn who they are.
Unusually, I actually agree with you on this point.
I guess the BadThing(tm) here is the lack of disclosure. It's astroturfing. The organised and mandatory nature of the posts fraudulently create the impression that anti-scientific views are far more common than they are. This could be cured by proper disclosure. I wonder, however, if an honest student wrote "Diclaimer: I'm writing this post as part of my course requirements for my ...," whether this would impact on their mark. I can't say, but I hope not, because that would be requiring Christians to engage in ethically unsound practices.
Besides, we're talking about Science here, not "Biblical Creationism" as such.
You are either being disingenuous or you don't understand the aims of the ID movement. Some text from the exam question quoted in TFA makes this explicit: "Sketch out a 20-year plan for defeating scientific materialism and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered ..."
Quite apart from the (rather interesting IMHO) question of whether there is some "intelligence" to the "design" of the universe, the ID movement is unambiguously part of the War on Science.
I see my hope was misplaced.
We're not talking about behavior
Violent crime is behaviour. We are talking about violent crime. Can you complete the syllogism?
We're talking about a genetic abnormality that correlates with behavior
You just said you are not talking about behaviour and here you are talking about something correlating with behaviour. What we are talking about is behaviour, a brain abnormality (not necessarily genetic) and the possible connection between the two in regard to gross statistics of a race's alleged propensity to that behaviour.
There's a subtle but important difference.
LOL. Nice try sunshine.
And I reiterate, assuming there's even a chance that socioeconomic conditions could have anything to do with a genetic trait ...
Don't be so dull!. This misunderstanding here has already been corrected once. Nobody here is assuming that socio-economic status determines genetics. Although the clear implication of the your statement, namely that genetics cannot determine socio-economic status, seems less clear. But I'm guessing you didn't actually mean that when you wrote it, did you?
When I write about "separat[ing] neuroantomical effects from cultural ones" I'm in fact assuming that they are separable. That if the data were normalised against socio-economic status, it might actually move closer to revealing a racial propensity to violence. That a genetic basis for such violence is, at least logically, possible. What is difficult about this?
If something seems to you "absurd on the face of it" that should be a strong sign to you that you have failed to read what was written, or that you have failed to understand what was written.
OK, so now I see what's clouding your thinking. This is a political question for you, not a scientific one. So you are arguing against some imagined "liberal," not against me. Aha! And therefor you don't need to read what I've written or make any effort to understand what you read. You simply argue against an imagined opponent to whom you deliberately ascribe indefensible statements. Let me try.
Really it's clear that if we sterilize all black children at birth we would eventually live in a crime-free world. Quicker still would be drowning them at birth.
Oh look, you're preaching genocide!
It's not nice, is it? So can we stick to what is actually written and stop inventing stuff to argue against?
I'm not a geneticist, but I do have formal training inter alia in neurosciences (my first degree was a Psych/Pharm major). You can rest assured that I'm not espousing some kind of hold-our Lamarkianism here. If anything you have read here leads you to believe that I'm assuming that genetics are determined by socio-economic conditions, then you have clearly misread what was written. Is that clear?
You should also know that I'm not arguing from some predefined political position (as you apparently are) but from the point of view of hard science. My original objection comes from scurrilous misuse of some (unreferenced) data. Just yesterday I read something in the paper about the top 10 baby names (here in Australia). They were good old-fashioned names like 'Jack.' Along with this list was a statement that this showed that "Gen Y is more conservative in its choice of names for children." Now how, short of some other metric, does a list of the top 10 names shown anything of the sort?! Or does my objection to this error of thinking constitute "liberal bias?"
It is evident that you have not received any formal training in experimental design, especially with regard to separating nature from nuture. You are ignorant even of the necessi
You're assuming there's a socioeconomic basis for genetic disabilities.
Quite the opposite! What I'm doing is not assuming that there is any genetic basis for behaviour which may be more prevalent in ethnic groups which are also socio-econmically disadvantaged. You're failing to grok something very fundamental here.
That remains to be seen [in response to "the null hypotesis is ..."]
No it doesn't, that is the null hypotesis when you are investigating the question of whether a greater propensity to some behaviour X among a certain ethnic/social grouping has a physiological/genetic basis.
At this point, we don't know what, if any, relation there is between ethnicity and this deformity. There may not be any.
At least not any physiological relation ... that's the gist of what I'm saying.
But to state that there can't be any ...
Who stated that?! What I asked for was whether the data (which for the sake of argument we'll assume is true) had been normalised against socio-economic status. Hopefully by now the importance of doing so "in terms of this discussion" is beginning to dawn on you.
In terms of this discussion, that doesn't really matter.
In terms of this discussion it is of vital importance to separate neuroantomical effects from cultural ones.
You could only establish that the genetic factors for this ethnicity are involved in one of two ways 1) normalise for socio-economic status (and any other likely causative factors which are unduly associated with particular ethnic groups), or 2) post-mortem brain analysis.
It is at the level of the individual that prejudice masking as science will incurr an unwarranted finacial cost. Remember the null hypothesis, the ethnicity per se is irrelevant in determinign whether any particular individual will suffer from this impairment or not.
The statistical data shows that violence -- especially, violent crime -- is disproportionately committed by African-Americans and Africans (in Africa).
Is that before or after the data has been normalised against socio-economic status?
Go back and read Bush's speech about why we needed to remove Saddam Hussein from power. WMDs were only one of many reasons given.
It was clear at the time that Bush had a unshakeable emotional attachment to the idea of invading Iraq. He was going to invade no matter what, even as Hussein was making concessions. So naturally there were many "reasons" given, it's just that the WMD idea is that one that found most traction domestically, so that's the one they ran with.
Why he actually invaded Iraq is something probably only his therapist (were he wise enough to have had one) would know. Maybe it had something to do with trying to succeed where Daddy "failed." Of course Daddy didn't fail, but let's just forget about the Bush who did a fairly good job as President.
It is sad that you see Freedom of Expression, one of the Human Rights, as a privilege that can be taken away instead of an inalienable right.
But Freedom of Expression clearly can be taken away (or not conceded in the first place). Try going to China and publically advocating for the rights of Tibetans and Urghurs.
The very concept of an 'inalienable right' is an ahistorical fairytale. 'Rights' are concessions that, for the most part, have had to be pried out of the hands of those who hold power. To consider them natural and inaliable, though it can be inspiring, can also be to take them for granted and to invite complacency in holding power to account.
I see you don't read /. at 0 or -1.
Sorry? ... I didn't get that, would you mind repeating that at >0?
By your logic, "r u going 2 da store" is properly formed English.
Gramatically it is a properly formed English sentence. Although the orthography is non-traditional, it's readable to most English readers. Moreover, it could be an appropriate way to communicate a message in a medium requiring parsimony, as for instance when sending text messages on mobile (cell) phones.
This example does not seem to impugn OP's logic, his aesthetics perhaps ...
The word is Skeptic, not Denialist.
At least as I, and many others use them, in the context of AGW, these words have different meanings (though sometimes the same individuals can be both). A skeptic is someone who has a good handle on the issues but demands better proof. So back in the 90s the skeptics were the scientists who raised objections like heat islands, measurement problems etc. Skeptics have a largely positive influence on the developement of the science.
A denialist on the other hand is simply someone who wants to deny an established 'fact' (inasmuch as Science, or indeed History, can generate 'facts'). Rather than relying on science they rely on rhetoric, propagandistic devices, they recirculate (often unknowingly) proofs long since debunked. Someone who turns up with a graph of historical temperatures with all figures from 1850-1988 expunged is a denialist. More often than not denialists actually believe what they say, being themselves the victims of disinformation campaigns.
The problem with referring to denialists as 'skeptics,' is that in general they exhibit a complete lack of doubt in regard to talking points which support their side. The level of gullability exhibited by most denialists is so extreme that to call them skeptics would stretch it's meaning to breaking point.
Denialist is clearly an emotionally loaded word designed to evoke thoughts of Holocaust deniers.
Well holocaust deniers are generally called that, not denialists. But clearly they are engaged in very similar activities, perhaps if the association is made, it is not entirely undeserved. Perhaps you could avoid this connotation by using the word 'contrarian' (importing a whole new set of connotations) instead. But if you refer to most denialists as skeptics, you are no longer speaking English.
Since global warming is the main change currently happening to our climate, attributing other changes to global warming is often an acceptable first hypothesis, at least if there's a known mechanism that could potentially link the two.
Well the "known mechanism" is probably a good thing to have before you move from hunch to public announcement.