In case you haven't noticed warming's stopped the last dozen or so years and we've actually started to get colder the last two.
Where did you "notice" this? Sorry dude, you've been fooled again! Stop and think!
"Cooler" relative to what? To some pre-industrial base-line? To some conventional baseline (eg 1951)? Or to... the previous year?! What do imagine the significance of that last comparison is? Think of the stockmarket, will there be a day which closes lower than a previous day in a rising market? Does that mean the market is about to go bust?
Look at the actual data expressed here for meteorological stations and here for the land-ocean index. Note that compared to a 1951 baseline there has not even been a monthly fall in temperature since 1992 and 1994 respectively, let alone a yearly one.
How many IPCC models predicted that? Zero?
It was widely predicted and reported that 2008-09 were expected to be somewhat cooler than the previous few years. This would not have been as the result of climate models which do not study changes in temperature over so short a time period, but from long-range weather forecasting.
A little humility might be in order on the part of the AGW crew.
What is the AGW crew? A little more knowledge and thought might be in order from you and yes some humility would be good too.
But it's not science but scientism to ignore new evidence. Trying to freeze consensus to the state of knowledge of a few years ago and ignoring the end of warming for the time being is politics masquerading as science and is doing real damage to science in general.
When I look at the mirror today, I can notice no more wrinkles than yesterday. Ergo I have stopped ageing. Cool I'm immortal! Well if I looked at a picture from 10 years ago I would instantly loose my immortality, so I shan't.
The warming trend over that last 160 years of the instrumental record, is so significant that it would take closer to 20 years of cooling to negate it. Not 2! That's not scientism, it's statistics.
You need to be far more sceptical about the sources of information you accept as valid. You've swallowed some rather obvious denialist propaganda hook line and sinker. Don't be fooled again.
I really appreciate you passing this along. I plan on reading this.
Cheers.
One note: Would the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change be the best place to look for evidence of if climate change exists, on the scale we're talking about, and whether CO2 affects this process and by how much? I would expect they would assume an outcome to justify their entire existence.
The best place to look would be on an academic abstracting and citation
service. Going this way, however, would require a lot of time and effort.
The IPCC Working Group 1, reports are the most convenient place to
look. When I was reading Science, being the lazy sod that I am, I'd always
look for review articles (if only to locate relevant primary articles).
You can think of the IPCC Assement Reports as
review papers on steriods.
As such they must ultimately cite published work from recognised
peer-reviewed journals. The idea of using the Executive Summary of this
technical paper is that the numbers in the brackets direct you to relevant
areas of the paper, which in turn direct you to the published work. It's
turtles all the way down.
If you don't want to spend that much time, but want somewhat more detail
than is contained in the cited summary, you could consult the Summary for Policy Makers and/or the Technical
Summary in the last AR4 WG1 Report. These will also link to the relevant parts of the report and in turn to the published work.
The name alone implies a huge conflict of interest. Yet, I don't think in this politically charged atmosphere we are going to find anything but politically patronized studies.
Well IPCC was set up around 1990 to evaluate the emerging science on the
issue so the name should not surprise. It is good to be sceptical of sources,
and of course once you have more than 2 people in a room you'll get politics.
But Science, at least, has established a set of epistemological rules which
eventually (though it may take decades) seem particularly suited to
establishing "truth" in the face of such politics. Particularly in a
highly contested field, as this was at one time, an eventual consensus ought to give
you some faith in the results. You can expect the Working Group on Mitigation
to be far more ideologically contested.
And when you think about it, if they were merely trying to justify their
existence their line would be "much uncertainty still remains... more funding
is needed."
If you you of any good place to read some papers of the causal links. I'd like something to read and bookmark for future uses.
If you don't have access to an academic library, or the electronic
resources thereof, that may not be easy.
I think anyone can access the ISI Search
Page (An ISI listing of a journal is perhaps the best guarantee of its
repute, and will steer you clear of "phish-journals") And perhaps even the abstracts (sorry
it's hard for me to tell, I'm working at a uni) Accessing the actual articles though
is another matter. But search away and see what you get.
As do the people who believe the science on global climate change is certain,
but who don't understand what it means that GCMs don't conserve energy in their basic equations.
Who said anything about GCMs?! They seem to me the least persuasive of the
various lines of evidence which establish AGW. Call me old-fashioned, but personally
I find the basic physics and the observed physical measurements (including the isotope
studies to establish the 'A') more convincing. The fact that GCMs agree and
have had some predictive power merely adds weight to the evidence (at least it indicates that observations are in accord with climatological theory).
Moreover, it is my understanding that the more sophisticated GCMs, notably GISSe,
do
claim to conserve total energy. If you have issues with this claim, you might
care to take it up with Gavin Schmidt on his blog directly.
Even were this not the case, this assertion is wrong, -- people who accept the consensus
position are not necessarily deluding themselves, nor are they necessarily
motivated by ideological (except as regards the nature of Science)
considerations. Indeed your assertion runs counter to the nature of
the scientific endeavour, which is, after all, based largely on authority.
smug ignoramuses...
That is neither polite, accurate, nor necessary. Moreover, the fact that you feel
you have to resort to name-calling undermines any claim you have to be an honest broker here. I take it your criticism of GCMs is similarly based on invective rather than fact.
... who couldn't integrate a first order PDE accurately to save their life
telling me that scepticism toward anthropogenic climate change is self-delusion.
I told you no such thing. What I called self-delusion was a refusal to
engage with the science on the basis that it is indoctrination and a conspiratorial power grab
by statist elements. In fact in another post I invited people to put up,
take the published maths and subject it to scrutiny and tell the world where
the errors are.
There is the world of difference between, on one hand, an informed sceptic who finds
fault with published science and does us the service of pointing out the flaws
and, on the other, an outright denialist who refuses to accept the science simply because the
science doesn't fit in with some predefined political stance and throws up all
kind of pseudo-scientific disinformation to obscure the matter. It is curious that
you feel yourself included in an attack on the latter.
I'm not a climatologist, nor a mathematician (we have
machines for that stuff now;) ). I was a Pharmacology major.
And while pharmacodynamics was somewhat of a personal forte, that was
in the 1970s, and you're right, my
calculus is long gone. However I haven't forgotten when to defer to
proper authority and, importantly, how to recognise it.
Let's make no bones
about this, despite the prevalence of romantic liberal myths surrounding Galileo
etc, Science does actually work on the notion of authority. From the moment
you come into the lab and put your sample into the GLC (without questioning
the basic physics or maths underlying the device) to when you cite authority
and proceed from what has gone before. Consequently I judge the published
experts in the field, whose work is conveniently summarised by the IPCC WG1, to
be more authoritative than you, no offence. I accept what they say, even if
it involves maths so complex that I never would have understood it (even back
in the mists of time). No, I accept their authority, especially if I
don't understand the maths or anything else, that's the idea after all.
That is not self-delusion (quite the opposite), it is not ideological bias,
that's Science (with a capital 'S').
[I]t is unquestionably plausible based on modelling that CO2 and other anthropogenic
contributions to greenhouse gases are very
I just visited that website and reviewed all PDFs in their Glossary. Not once does it explicitly define CO2 as a pollutant.
I doubt that you will find CO2 explicitly "defined" as a pollutant anywhere on their site. You are more likely to find that in a legal context where an Act needs to define what is and what is not a 'pollutant' for purposes of said Act. What you will find is the current (well slightly behind now) science surrounding the effects etc. of CO2 and other GH forcing agents on the climate system. These effects are clearly deliterious. If you want to play semantic games, you might want to argue that merely being environmentally damaging doesn't make something a pollutant, but that would run perilously close to argument by definition. I think we all understand how the terms 'pollutant' and 'emissions' are being used in this discussion.
Please point me to a portion of their site that does, because I cannot find it
I'm pointing you in the direction of the Executive Summary, because, semantics aside, that is the quickest way to get a handle on the substantive issue.
Your continued capitalization of the word "Science" exposes you as the cultist.
Believe me your counter-factual blathering and accusations of better informed persons as being "indoctrinated" are far more pursuasive.
You regard "Science" as your god.
Well "god" is probably overstating it, but yes I do regard Science with a certain reverance. I capitalise Music, Law, Art, History when referring to the category of human endeavour known by that name. In any case it is clear that you hate science as much as Science.
I just find this notion that CO2 is a pollutant quite absurd.
I assure you, that is a problem just a little honest self-education will fix. You could start here: Fourth Assessment Report. It is difficult to find any other area of science where so much authoritative information has been so conveniently assembled. You can read just the executive summary or conveniently delve into the specifics of any area you choose. Really, on this issue ignorance is unforgivable. As is reliance on non-credible sources of pseudo-scientific disinformation.
Because it's not so much as science as it is indoctrination by statist regimes usurping power and control.
Or you can wallow in ignorance, self-delusion based on your particular ideological predilcctions. That's a choice you alone can make. Look, I'm no enemy of freedom or proponent of over-governance, far from it, but the Science here really does speak for itself.
You seem to imply that CO2 is not a polluting emission, and curiously you call people who think it is "indoctrinated"; somewhat ironic, since the scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is as real as science gets. If you are an AGW denier, you are the one indoctrinated...
Is it really that curious? I thought it was rather par for the course for cult members to believe that everyone else is the world is indoctrinated and they and their fellow cultists alone have access to Truth.
So, if you want to disprove the consensus (which historically has indeed happened a number of times), the only thing you need is to prove it wrong.
Yes absolutely, the maths is all out there in the public domain. Just show us where the errors are! But that, of course, would require our cultist to engage with the actual orthodox science of climate change, and as all good cultists well know, Science is a plot against Freedom (and America!).... Ahem.
What you said was "attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work".. so you've given one example, a terrible one at that btw
Terrible in that it is not an example of attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work?" Terrible in that such behaviour would not be remedied by copyright legislation? Or terrible because it shows up so clearly your lack of understanding and insight -- and because you imagine that by simply labelling an example 'terrible' it will convince anyone other than yourself? It's really quite hilarious that you think you can call so pertinent an example "terrible" given it was in response to the complete non sequitur you delivered. Oh and btw, it was not I who wrote the sentence you quote.
... cause all you're coming across as is another slashtard who thinks copyright is a natural right
I'm not coming across like that at all. You are jumping to conclusions based on... what precisely? Where in any way say or imply that I regard copyright as a "natural right."
"Slashtard?" Talk about projection (in the Freudian sense)! What I am is a lawyer with a fair idea of the history of intellectual property in the English (and derrivative) common law tradition. It is even possible that I know more about it than you (as hard as that might be for you to accept).
The only place I believe in 'natural law,' or 'natural rights,' is in your fevered imagination. Allow me to state my view of copyright explicitly: Copyright is a temporary, state enforced, statutory monopoly which serves to correct a systemic failure of free markets, namely the "free rider effect." Any example of the free rider effect (such as the one I gave) will serve to illustrate the function of copyright legislation . How do you get "natural right" from that position?!
As I see that you have no response to the first substantive issue of my original response, namely that you are incorrect in implying that copyright restricts the use of works in the public domain. I take it that you have sense enough at least to conceed that point?
So taking something from the public domain and publishing it, thus causing it to not fall into obscurity is corrupt? How do you figure?
Huh? Copyright doesn't stop you publishing "something from the public domain."
What would be corrupt is me reading the manuscript of a book you've written, making a copy, handing it back to you and telling you I'm not interested in paying you for it, and then publishing it and making money out of your work. That's the kind of corrupt behaviour copyright is intended to stop.
The article explicitly states that the person cleaning the fridge was not affected (effected?) due to allergies which prevent her from smelling.
I found that very interesting too. It's not that the smellers "need to grow balls," which is easy for GP to write, not having been subject to said smell. But that a sensation apparently unrelated to actual toxicity could so profoundly affect a number of people as to require hospitalisation. Amazing things humans.
I ought to add that your question begging extends to the solution advocated by OP, namely to break the entity up so that X and Y are produced by separate entities. Again, the fact of Z, for from being unaccounted for, is the very topic under consideration.
Your analogy is broken because it does not account for the fact that both X and Y are produced by the same entity and said entity actually considers them not two products X and Y, but a single product, Z.
The entity obviously thinks that, but your response merely begs the question. Far from "not accounting for the fact", what I wrote was specifically about that fact. I did not claim, nor intend to imply, that this is a case of third line forcing, if that's where you're coming from.
The OP clearly sees them as discrete products and wants to consume some and not others. The fact that "the entity" considers them a single product is the very source of the unfreedom OP experiences as a consumer. And it is in correcting the entity's thinking that the consumers generally are given greater choice. Get it now?
Which is not to say that freedom ought to be preferred to proprietary rights, of course (that depends on your "philosophy"). But this is an example where the two are in conflict.
What entitles you to other people's work on terms of your choosing?
Freedom - which is, after all, about the right to choose.
If a producer of X says I can only consume X if I also consume Y, I loose one degree of freedom (ie. the choice of whether or not to consume Y). Since producer->consumer is a one->many relationship there is a net gain to freedom if the producer is restrained from forcing consumption choices on consumers.
Freedom may scale well, but what you are offering us is less choice, ergo less freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
In case you haven't noticed warming's stopped the last dozen or so years and we've actually started to get colder the last two.
Where did you "notice" this? Sorry dude, you've been fooled again! Stop and think!
"Cooler" relative to what? To some pre-industrial base-line? To some conventional baseline (eg 1951)? Or to ... the previous year?! What do imagine the significance of that last comparison is? Think of the stockmarket, will there be a day which closes lower than a previous day in a rising market? Does that mean the market is about to go bust?
Look at the actual data expressed here for meteorological stations and here for the land-ocean index. Note that compared to a 1951 baseline there has not even been a monthly fall in temperature since 1992 and 1994 respectively, let alone a yearly one.
How many IPCC models predicted that? Zero?
It was widely predicted and reported that 2008-09 were expected to be somewhat cooler than the previous few years. This would not have been as the result of climate models which do not study changes in temperature over so short a time period, but from long-range weather forecasting.
A little humility might be in order on the part of the AGW crew.
What is the AGW crew? A little more knowledge and thought might be in order from you and yes some humility would be good too.
But it's not science but scientism to ignore new evidence. Trying to freeze consensus to the state of knowledge of a few years ago and ignoring the end of warming for the time being is politics masquerading as science and is doing real damage to science in general.
When I look at the mirror today, I can notice no more wrinkles than yesterday. Ergo I have stopped ageing. Cool I'm immortal! Well if I looked at a picture from 10 years ago I would instantly loose my immortality, so I shan't.
The warming trend over that last 160 years of the instrumental record, is so significant that it would take closer to 20 years of cooling to negate it. Not 2! That's not scientism, it's statistics.
You need to be far more sceptical about the sources of information you accept as valid. You've swallowed some rather obvious denialist propaganda hook line and sinker. Don't be fooled again.
Sorry, I meant to write 0.1%
It would take more than 0.01% which is about what we have now.
I really appreciate you passing this along. I plan on reading this.
Cheers.
One note: Would the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change be the best place to look for evidence of if climate change exists, on the scale we're talking about, and whether CO2 affects this process and by how much? I would expect they would assume an outcome to justify their entire existence.
The best place to look would be on an academic abstracting and citation service. Going this way, however, would require a lot of time and effort. The IPCC Working Group 1, reports are the most convenient place to look. When I was reading Science, being the lazy sod that I am, I'd always look for review articles (if only to locate relevant primary articles). You can think of the IPCC Assement Reports as review papers on steriods.
As such they must ultimately cite published work from recognised peer-reviewed journals. The idea of using the Executive Summary of this technical paper is that the numbers in the brackets direct you to relevant areas of the paper, which in turn direct you to the published work. It's turtles all the way down.
If you don't want to spend that much time, but want somewhat more detail than is contained in the cited summary, you could consult the Summary for Policy Makers and/or the Technical Summary in the last AR4 WG1 Report. These will also link to the relevant parts of the report and in turn to the published work.
The name alone implies a huge conflict of interest. Yet, I don't think in this politically charged atmosphere we are going to find anything but politically patronized studies.
Well IPCC was set up around 1990 to evaluate the emerging science on the issue so the name should not surprise. It is good to be sceptical of sources, and of course once you have more than 2 people in a room you'll get politics. But Science, at least, has established a set of epistemological rules which eventually (though it may take decades) seem particularly suited to establishing "truth" in the face of such politics. Particularly in a highly contested field, as this was at one time, an eventual consensus ought to give you some faith in the results. You can expect the Working Group on Mitigation to be far more ideologically contested.
And when you think about it, if they were merely trying to justify their existence their line would be "much uncertainty still remains ... more funding
is needed."
If you you of any good place to read some papers of the causal links. I'd like something to read and bookmark for future uses.
If you don't have access to an academic library, or the electronic resources thereof, that may not be easy.
I think anyone can access the ISI Search Page (An ISI listing of a journal is perhaps the best guarantee of its repute, and will steer you clear of "phish-journals") And perhaps even the abstracts (sorry it's hard for me to tell, I'm working at a uni) Accessing the actual articles though is another matter. But search away and see what you get.
Sorry, slashcode corrected the link to Gavin Schmidt's blog, which is, of course RealCimate
As do the people who believe the science on global climate change is certain, but who don't understand what it means that GCMs don't conserve energy in their basic equations.
Who said anything about GCMs?! They seem to me the least persuasive of the various lines of evidence which establish AGW. Call me old-fashioned, but personally I find the basic physics and the observed physical measurements (including the isotope studies to establish the 'A') more convincing. The fact that GCMs agree and have had some predictive power merely adds weight to the evidence (at least it indicates that observations are in accord with climatological theory).
Moreover, it is my understanding that the more sophisticated GCMs, notably GISSe, do claim to conserve total energy. If you have issues with this claim, you might care to take it up with Gavin Schmidt on his blog directly.
Even were this not the case, this assertion is wrong, -- people who accept the consensus position are not necessarily deluding themselves, nor are they necessarily motivated by ideological (except as regards the nature of Science) considerations. Indeed your assertion runs counter to the nature of the scientific endeavour, which is, after all, based largely on authority.
smug ignoramuses ...
That is neither polite, accurate, nor necessary. Moreover, the fact that you feel you have to resort to name-calling undermines any claim you have to be an honest broker here. I take it your criticism of GCMs is similarly based on invective rather than fact.
I told you no such thing. What I called self-delusion was a refusal to engage with the science on the basis that it is indoctrination and a conspiratorial power grab by statist elements. In fact in another post I invited people to put up, take the published maths and subject it to scrutiny and tell the world where the errors are.
There is the world of difference between, on one hand, an informed sceptic who finds fault with published science and does us the service of pointing out the flaws and, on the other, an outright denialist who refuses to accept the science simply because the science doesn't fit in with some predefined political stance and throws up all kind of pseudo-scientific disinformation to obscure the matter. It is curious that you feel yourself included in an attack on the latter.
I'm not a climatologist, nor a mathematician (we have machines for that stuff now ;) ). I was a Pharmacology major.
And while pharmacodynamics was somewhat of a personal forte, that was
in the 1970s, and you're right, my
calculus is long gone. However I haven't forgotten when to defer to
proper authority and, importantly, how to recognise it.
Let's make no bones about this, despite the prevalence of romantic liberal myths surrounding Galileo etc, Science does actually work on the notion of authority. From the moment you come into the lab and put your sample into the GLC (without questioning the basic physics or maths underlying the device) to when you cite authority and proceed from what has gone before. Consequently I judge the published experts in the field, whose work is conveniently summarised by the IPCC WG1, to be more authoritative than you, no offence. I accept what they say, even if it involves maths so complex that I never would have understood it (even back in the mists of time). No, I accept their authority, especially if I don't understand the maths or anything else, that's the idea after all. That is not self-delusion (quite the opposite), it is not ideological bias, that's Science (with a capital 'S').
[I]t is unquestionably plausible based on modelling that CO2 and other anthropogenic contributions to greenhouse gases are very
s/pursuasive/persuasive/ God I hate doing that! :%
I just visited that website and reviewed all PDFs in their Glossary. Not once does it explicitly define CO2 as a pollutant.
I doubt that you will find CO2 explicitly "defined" as a pollutant anywhere on their site. You are more likely to find that in a legal context where an Act needs to define what is and what is not a 'pollutant' for purposes of said Act. What you will find is the current (well slightly behind now) science surrounding the effects etc. of CO2 and other GH forcing agents on the climate system. These effects are clearly deliterious. If you want to play semantic games, you might want to argue that merely being environmentally damaging doesn't make something a pollutant, but that would run perilously close to argument by definition. I think we all understand how the terms 'pollutant' and 'emissions' are being used in this discussion.
Please point me to a portion of their site that does, because I cannot find it
I'm pointing you in the direction of the Executive Summary, because, semantics aside, that is the quickest way to get a handle on the substantive issue.
Your continued capitalization of the word "Science" exposes you as the cultist.
Believe me your counter-factual blathering and accusations of better informed persons as being "indoctrinated" are far more pursuasive.
You regard "Science" as your god.
Well "god" is probably overstating it, but yes I do regard Science with a certain reverance. I capitalise Music, Law, Art, History when referring to the category of human endeavour known by that name. In any case it is clear that you hate science as much as Science.
I just find this notion that CO2 is a pollutant quite absurd.
I assure you, that is a problem just a little honest self-education will fix. You could start here: Fourth Assessment Report. It is difficult to find any other area of science where so much authoritative information has been so conveniently assembled. You can read just the executive summary or conveniently delve into the specifics of any area you choose. Really, on this issue ignorance is unforgivable. As is reliance on non-credible sources of pseudo-scientific disinformation.
Because it's not so much as science as it is indoctrination by statist regimes usurping power and control.
Or you can wallow in ignorance, self-delusion based on your particular ideological predilcctions. That's a choice you alone can make. Look, I'm no enemy of freedom or proponent of over-governance, far from it, but the Science here really does speak for itself.
You seem to imply that CO2 is not a polluting emission, and curiously you call people who think it is "indoctrinated"; somewhat ironic, since the scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is as real as science gets. If you are an AGW denier, you are the one indoctrinated ...
Is it really that curious? I thought it was rather par for the course for cult members to believe that everyone else is the world is indoctrinated and they and their fellow cultists alone have access to Truth.
So, if you want to disprove the consensus (which historically has indeed happened a number of times), the only thing you need is to prove it wrong.
Yes absolutely, the maths is all out there in the public domain. Just show us where the errors are! But that, of course, would require our cultist to engage with the actual orthodox science of climate change, and as all good cultists well know, Science is a plot against Freedom (and America!). ... Ahem.
Hey you, stop breathing. Your CO2 is polluting the planet!
My CO2 is on the short-term carbon cycle. As it happens I haven't been easting too much coal lately. I can't speak for you of course.
Don't you just love "science"?
What do you mean the inverted commas to signify?
Indoctrination complete.
Why do you hate Science?
Why is it that everyone thinks that the most fuel efficient is also the least polluting?
All humour aside, bear in mind that 'pollution' in the present context means CO2.
And the goal here isn't to improve quality, it's to lower it.
Yes damnit! I want my car to be seriously fuel inefficient. Imagine, I'll be spending less on gas, and I'll be polluting less too! HOW DARE THEY!!!!!!
Is it only me, or is party politcal tribalism a possible new DSM classification?
They should have chosen a celebrity who the subject does find very attractive.
That's exactly what they did.
What you said was "attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work" .. so you've given one example, a terrible one at that btw
Terrible in that it is not an example of attempting to unfairly profit from somebody else's hard work?" Terrible in that such behaviour would not be remedied by copyright legislation? Or terrible because it shows up so clearly your lack of understanding and insight -- and because you imagine that by simply labelling an example 'terrible' it will convince anyone other than yourself? It's really quite hilarious that you think you can call so pertinent an example "terrible" given it was in response to the complete non sequitur you delivered. Oh and btw, it was not I who wrote the sentence you quote.
I'm not coming across like that at all. You are jumping to conclusions based on ... what precisely? Where in any way say or imply that I regard copyright as a "natural right."
"Slashtard?" Talk about projection (in the Freudian sense)! What I am is a lawyer with a fair idea of the history of intellectual property in the English (and derrivative) common law tradition. It is even possible that I know more about it than you (as hard as that might be for you to accept).
The only place I believe in 'natural law,' or 'natural rights,' is in your fevered imagination. Allow me to state my view of copyright explicitly: Copyright is a temporary, state enforced, statutory monopoly which serves to correct a systemic failure of free markets, namely the "free rider effect." Any example of the free rider effect (such as the one I gave) will serve to illustrate the function of copyright legislation . How do you get "natural right" from that position?!
As I see that you have no response to the first substantive issue of my original response, namely that you are incorrect in implying that copyright restricts the use of works in the public domain. I take it that you have sense enough at least to conceed that point?
So taking something from the public domain and publishing it, thus causing it to not fall into obscurity is corrupt? How do you figure?
Huh? Copyright doesn't stop you publishing "something from the public domain."
What would be corrupt is me reading the manuscript of a book you've written, making a copy, handing it back to you and telling you I'm not interested in paying you for it, and then publishing it and making money out of your work. That's the kind of corrupt behaviour copyright is intended to stop.
The article explicitly states that the person cleaning the fridge was not affected (effected?) due to allergies which prevent her from smelling.
I found that very interesting too. It's not that the smellers "need to grow balls," which is easy for GP to write, not having been subject to said smell. But that a sensation apparently unrelated to actual toxicity could so profoundly affect a number of people as to require hospitalisation. Amazing things humans.
Indeed; nothing can.
Nor indeed is there any requirement or reason to "demonstrate the non-existence of X," where there is no evidence for the putative existence of X.
On a side not, this discovery doesn't demonstrate the non-existence of the tooth fairy either.
I ought to add that your question begging extends to the solution advocated by OP, namely to break the entity up so that X and Y are produced by separate entities. Again, the fact of Z, for from being unaccounted for, is the very topic under consideration.
Your analogy is broken because it does not account for the fact that both X and Y are produced by the same entity and said entity actually considers them not two products X and Y, but a single product, Z.
The entity obviously thinks that, but your response merely begs the question. Far from "not accounting for the fact", what I wrote was specifically about that fact. I did not claim, nor intend to imply, that this is a case of third line forcing, if that's where you're coming from.
The OP clearly sees them as discrete products and wants to consume some and not others. The fact that "the entity" considers them a single product is the very source of the unfreedom OP experiences as a consumer. And it is in correcting the entity's thinking that the consumers generally are given greater choice. Get it now?
Which is not to say that freedom ought to be preferred to proprietary rights, of course (that depends on your "philosophy"). But this is an example where the two are in conflict.
What entitles you to other people's work on terms of your choosing?
Freedom - which is, after all, about the right to choose.
If a producer of X says I can only consume X if I also consume Y, I loose one degree of freedom (ie. the choice of whether or not to consume Y). Since producer->consumer is a one->many relationship there is a net gain to freedom if the producer is restrained from forcing consumption choices on consumers.
Freedom may scale well, but what you are offering us is less choice, ergo less freedom.
Maybe the real problem is that patent are valid for such a long period of time.
How long is that? Somewhere around 2 decades? Hardly "such a long period of time," say in comparison to copyright terms.
Oh, and regarding the actual article, no CO2 from the alcohol industry is on a wholly different scale from CO2 emissions from industry and transport.
Not to mention that it isn't introducing any carbon into the troposphere, unlike say the consumption of fossil fuels used to power the brewery.