You may be thinking too narrowly. Look at some of the modern functional languages such as SML or Haskell. In those languages, symbols like +, -, and * are all just function calls semantically, but syntactically they are operators (as is any sequence of non-alphanumeric characters, approximately). You can actually define the operator precedence at compile time, and the parser will adjust accordingly. You can still define these functions however you like, just like in Smalltalk. (Of course, these languages do not have runtime function dispatch or anything like that, but this is orthogonal to parsing issues).
I am not saying this can't be done, or that it does not happen in other languages. All I am saying Smalltalk does not have operators - there is no syntactic difference between operators and methods, so this can't be done in Smalltalk.
That's absurd. You are confusing parsing and evaluation. I don't care how Smalltalk evaluates the expression [2 + 3], I just want the text "2 + 3 * 5" to be parsed as [2 + (3 * 5)] rather than [(2 + 3) * 5]. Either way, Smalltalk can then internally send some messages around to actually perform the computation.
Yes, this would make the parser more complicated. Hey! I don't care! Parsers are designed for humans, not the other way around.
You are confusing methods with operators. Smalltalk has no operators. Smalltalk parses all expressions as method calls - there is simply no mechanism in the Smalltalk language to assign different operator priorities. The text '2 + 3 * 5' is a sequence of method calls, just like any others. To attempt to parse it as if it were an arithmetic expression is meaningless. For example, what about "A * B"? Sure, that "*" looks like a math operation, but "A" might be of a non-mathematical class, and * might have another meaning entirely. If you attempt to impose mathematical parsing, you will break the incredible flexibility and purity of Smalltalk, in which symbols like +=/ and * can be redefined or used as method names for any class.
The Smalltalk parser can't be set to recognise math expressions because math operators are simply method names. It can't even say 'assume a math expression if we are dealing with numbers' because the types of objects aren't known at parse time.
I for myself still think global warming could be nice, after the initial, inevitable adaptation pains. More crops, more habitable lands.
Global warming does not imply more crops, or more habitable lands. It implies less. For example, a significant fraction of the world relies on the glaciers in the Himalayas for water. If those go, there will be vastly less habitable lands.
It does exactly the same thing in Python, C++, and C#, yet those languages have regular operator precedence. How you define operator precedence is unrelated to how arithmetic is implemented at the object level.
Sure, but Smalltalk is a simpler language. It does not have operators - only messages. The distinction is only required when you introduce additional syntactical complexity.
Smalltalk could easily have defined "2 + 3 * 4" to mean "2 + ( 3 * 4 )". Or, it could simply have disallowed "2 + 3 * 4" altogether and required parentheses "(2 + 3) * 4" or "2 + (3 * 4)" in all cases involving arithmetic operators (we're only talking about "+", "-", "*", and "/"). Strict left-to-right evaluation was a bad idea and too error prone
No, it could not easily have defined those.
Strict left-to-right simply is a matter of convention, and is not error prone. People easily switch to different conventions, as shown by the success of reverse polish on some systems.
After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Firstly, violent crimes have fallen dramatically since 1997. Secondly, law abiding citizens in Britain have not been 'disarmed', as they never were armed. Gun ownership in the UK was always limited to a tiny minority, and so criminals never expected to be confronted with guns. The banning of guns in 1997 was simply to remove the very few private firearms that could still cause problems (as happened at Dunblane).
If you are basing any kind of case for mass ownership of guns (a crazy idea in any society) on this, you are well out of line.
The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution."
And you assume mass ownership of guns would help that?
There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone for knives in designated areas.
Totally irrelevant. The banning of a few privately-owned rifles for sport (which is what happened in the UK) would have had no influence on this.
Where are we going? Who is taking us there? Should we be kicking and screaming?
Celebrating, in my view. Perhaps you might manage to get your murder rates down to that of other western democracies.
Just about the only thing that Smalltalk got wrong was to use strict left-to-right evaluation for arithmetic expressions; a better compromise might have been simply to require arithmetic expressions to be fully parenthesized.
That is because Smalltalk doesn't have arithmetic expressions - it only has sending messages to objects:
2 + 3
is sending the message '+' to the object '2' with the argument '3'.
Introducing the idea of actual arithmetic expressions into Smalltalk would make it far more complicated.
But there's absolutely zero chance that humans can organise reducing C02 emissions by 2050. Even if the US and Western Europe went back to a pre industrial civilisation, China and India will increase their emissions so much that there will still be an increase.
Actually, reducing emissions isn't hard at all. A switch to mainly nuclear power, combined with a hydrogen system for cars would do it.
Well the Greenland ice shet is melting anyway. I've read wildely varying figures for sea level rise, some mm per year, some metres. Even if the sea levels rise, both of us work in countries which can afford low tech solutions like levies. Personally, I live in a country which can even maintain them correctly too.
Good for us. What about India, Bangladesh and others?
And look at the error bar on that - there's a big difference between 2 degress and 9 degrees I think. I looked up the Permian extinction, and one theory is a 5 degree C increase triggered it.
You seem to be ignoring what I have posted before. Of course there are error bars; the point is that some predictions are more extreme than others, but consequences of the extreme ones are too dire to ignore.
Most of the extreme figures quoted in the media assume some kind of positive feedback system (based on methane hydrate gasification IIRC) and we don't know if that will happen.
I am happy for you. You are able to selectively believe whatever makes you feel most comfortable. We don't know that it will happen, but we know that it could happen.
You also keep doing what I have already said is extremely poor science - you are picking and choosing individual viewpoints to match what you want to believe: you don't like Scientific American, you listen to John Maddox (John Maddox is respectable, but he has a minority view).
If you aren't personally an expert, it only makes sense to listen to the consensus. The difficulty with your approach is that those who agree with you are getting fewer and fewer....
It's a big jump to policy recommendations from this level of understanding of climate, which is really my only problem with the debate.
No, it isn't. Because, as I have said before, those temperature changes are just global averages. Even small changes (up to 1C) will result in major melting of polar ice, with potentially disastrous consequences.
My argument is that if you select for scientists called "experts on climate change", of course that person will believe that climate change is real and serious. Just like if you ask a professor of theology, of course they will believe in God. Their careers are essentially based on that axiom. It's also hard to get a grant if you don't believe in the thing you are getting paid to study.
You are wildly out here. I am not talking about experts on 'climate change', I am talking about experts on 'climate'. My point is that virtually all experts on 'climate' believe it is changing. Also, the phrase 'climate change' does not imply anyone automatically assumes positive change. Climate scientists have also discovered negative changes. But now, positive changes dominate.
But if you ask a statistician, or a biologist, a physicist or a chemist what they think of the arguments for climate change being real and serious, they are much more skeptical. But they're not skeptical of other bits of science outside their specialty. That makes me trust the study of climate change less than say physics. That and the fact that when I actually look at the data, it's mostly random with a slight trend. I can't really explain any further than that.
This is just a plain wrong generalisation. It is not random with a slight trend, and if you think it is, you are looking at the wrong data, or looking at the data the wrong way.
What can happen is that people confuse apparently noisy data with randomness. With the appropriate statistical techniques, accurate trend predictions can be made from what looks like noise, using methods recognised throughout science.
Your generalisation is wrong because publications regarding global warming have appeared in top-rank interdisciplinary journals, like Nature. Publications only get there if they are of the highest quality, and recognised as such by those outside of the field.
It's not convincing to me, it's not convincing to the people I discuss it with.
I simply don't understand what is not convincing? Global warming? It is happening - just look at glaciers and the thinning of the arctic. That CO2 traps heat? That is basic chemistry and physics. That we are producting vast amounts and changing the atmosphere? That is plain fact.
"No respectable scientist is denying" is an appeal to authority. There's also an implicit ad hominem there, since you're calling all the scientists who disagree with you non respectable.
No, you are drawing the wrong conclusions here. In the past many respectable scientists did disagree. All that has happened is that growing evidence has convinced them. If you want to read the opinion of a real honest skeptic on this matter, read what Michael Shermer says. He has made a career on being skeptical about scientific fashions, and he is very well respected in science, unlike Crichton. Like you he assumed much of the concern about global warming effects was from extreme environmentalists, and damaging. However, look at what he now says:
"How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip"
"The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance."
"And biologist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) reveals how he went from being a skeptical environmentalist to a believing activist as incontrovertible data linking the increase of carbon dioxide to global warming accumulated in the past decade."
"According to Flannery, even if we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2050, average global temperatures will increase between two and nine degrees by 2100. This rise co
I think that 'consensus' views tend to be simplistic to the point of being wrong. It's not so much that the majority of scientists are wrong, just that in this case the media tries to turn what they say into "Imminent catastophe: We rich people are to blame". The scientists I've spoken to see things as being much less clear cut, and the climate as being essentially unpredictable.
I am talking about a scientific consensus, not a media consensus.
The climate is not essentially unpredictable; if it was, there would not be such effort put into modelling it!
People have been claiming stuff like that for ages. Michael Crichton may not be an expert on climate change, but he's smart enough to dig up cases of people like Paul Ehrlich claiming imminent mass starvation in America, commodity prices going through the roof and so on, and he's been wrong every time.
Sorry, but science doesn't work like that. It isn't a series of individuals picking quotes, or individual opinions. Of course some individuals will be wrong.
Yes they are. The whole tone of the greens' argument is obnoxious
I am not talking about Greens, I am talking about scientists.
Surely anyone with an interest in science or economics can discuss them? If you only ask experts on climate change if climate change is a serious problem, aren't you introducing a bit of bias?
Of course you aren't! I really can't understand what you are trying to say here - that non-experts have views that should be taken into account? Why? Does not understanding something have some sort of merit?
The problem with Crichton is that his views get unfairly publicised because he is a well-known author, and a science fiction writer. The addition problem is that he writes very bad science in his fiction - if anything that should be a reason to reject his views.
it's all about how the consensus agrees with me, the only people that don't are paid shills. The evidence I've seen doesn't really convince me that we need to do anything drastic, it's as simple as that. There's a load of uncertainty in this stuff, and the everyone seems to be be picking the worst case result of climate change to make the problem seem much more serious than it likely is, and then using a mixture of ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority to silence people that question them.
Firstly, you can't both talk about uncertainty, and then say 'its as simple as that'. It is not simple. There is indeed uncertainty, but we have to deal with the range of predictions.
There are no appeals to authority - the appeals are to data and statistics that are there for anyone to analyse.
No respectable scientist is denying that climate is changing, or that human-produced CO2 is a significant contributor to that. The issue is by how much it will change. Predictions range within a series of extremes, from a few degrees C to 5,6 or more.
This does not look too bad, but the problem is that it is an average global change - the change at the poles is far greater, and is already happening, and already melting substantial amounts of ice.
The problem is that some of the less-likely predictions (very high rise) could have consequences that could be terrible. They simply can't be ignored.
Don't get sidetracked by 'the greens'. That is not the issue. We have a problem to deal with, and if we start to deal with it now it won't be too painful, and could even bring major economic benefits. However, ignoring it by cherry-picking the views that are comforting. Ignore the greens; ignore the media - go direct to the science. If you bypass the media you will find an almost unanimous view that climate change is happening and is serious.
No Boeing aren't using Java for flight systems, except on unmanned vehicles. Java won't ever be DO-178B certified so the FAA wouldn't allow it near an actual flight system.
Those are still flight systems. My point was not that Boeing are going to use Java for all real-time or embedded systems - it was that Java is not simply a language for beginners.
Memory management based on garbage collection interfere with real-time requirements, so you won't find java-based flight systems.
This isn't the case. Garbage collection in real-time Java is well-established, as in the example of PERC.
You most certainly did deny that they aren't. Right there in the first quoted sentence.
No, I didn't. I was denying that meteorologists aren't necessarily climatologists. But all climatologists have to be meteorologists, at least to some extent. Climatology is a big set of skills, one of which should be meteorology.
Hardly. One accurate contrary observation invalidates a categorical claim. Sagan's red-eyed dictum promotes a fallacy of herd dominance. Sagan may "require" what he likes, but the truth is the truth quite independently of his "requirements".
What you are stating isn't science. One contrary observation by itself is of no consequence, unless it can be duplicated or replicated.
C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy. Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.
This is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. (Anyway C++ is more like driving without a seatbelt - no matter how good you are you will end up getting more hurt when things go wrong sooner or later).
Java and C# are not inefficient, and anyone who claims that they are is years out of date.
It may be cool and nerdy to hack around with pointers and manual memory management, but in almost all cases it is totally unecessary, and to claim that it is required for performance is to seriously underestimate the power of modern VMs and garbage collection systems.
Far from removing the need to think, languages like Java and C# allow the developer to think about what really matters - developing good algorithms, rather than having to deal with much irrelevant housekeeping. The vastly improved error handling of the languages also allows the developer to concentrate on fixing bugs, rather than trying to trace where the bugs are (I remember my days as a DOS C++ developer, when pointer errors led to a jammed PC and interesting random screen graphics). For example, developing and debugging multi-threaded applications in Java is orders of magnitude simpler than the equivalent in C++.
And it is interesting who you consider beginners. As an example, perhaps you would like to explain to Boeing, who are are using Java for flight systems, replacing C++ and Ada, why they are 'beginners'?
But we can't do experiments on the Earth's climate, so the correcting mechanism is broken.
No, it isn't. One can run models against what is there, and correct if the model doesn't reproduce it. For example, in the astrosciences models are run of galaxy formation. We can't run actual experiments on galaxies, but that does not make the models any less valid.
E.g. Lysenkoism, creationism, eugenics and planned economies where interesting ideas. Basing public policy on them, especially public policy which was not democratically alterable was disasterous.
It was disastrous because they were extremely poor science.
It's same with global warming, global cooling, population explosion, population collapse, running out of resources. A few of these are probably correct in fact, but I don't think we'll no enough about any of them to avoid them causing a disaster in the future.
Well, many who are lifelong experts in these subjects do think we know enough about them - who are you to say this? Actually, I think the problem is trying to use the provisional truth that's the best that science can give you, using it to make predictions into the distant future, and then making drastic economic changes now based on those predictions.
I wish it was the distant future, but it isn't. We are talking about significant climatic changes within a century, not millenia.
Actually, population explosion is my favourite example. Mao decided that the Chinese population was growing too fast when actually it was probably static or falling. He decided to take drastic action, the one child policy, enforced by things like forced abortions. This was a catastophe for the Chinese, and it may yet cause them economic problems in the future because it will cause their society to age before it gets rich. Their gender balance is seriously skewed too.
I can't see the point here.... is it that because the Chinese have poorly implemented population control, that unlimited growth of population is good?
Come to think of it global cooling is kind of interesting too. Just imagine if global warming is real and we had made public policy decisions based on the consensus on global cooling in the 1970s.
There was no consensus on global cooling in the 1970s. This is a myth.
The point is that if you don't really know how to predict stuff into the distant future, you should not have a policy that's determined by those predictions.
But the policies would be extremely beneficial, encouraging energy economy and a reduced reliance on oil and gas from unstable regions.
But I think science probably corrects itself ok in the absence of this. It happened with global cooling, if global warming is similar flawed, that will get corrected too.
Global warming is not some sort of proposal that needs to be tested and corrected, it is unquestionably actually happening.
Yeah, but if the BBC covered that like they covered climate change they'd say "the overwhelming consensus is that the old theory is mostly correct, and can be fixed with a few minor changes. Only a small minority of scientists believe in so called quantum theory, which is a much more radical revision"
Why is there this continued assumption that minority views are always right? Sure, quantum mechanics was once a minority view, but so was the belief that the earth is hollow. Not all minority views turn out right - in fact almost none of them do.
You don't get to pick the minority view you want simply to support your political or economic beliefs.
A better example, as Michael Crichton pointed out, would be the consensus on eugenics or Lysenkoism, which was used to justify some very evil actions.
Those examples help back the case I am trying to make. Lysenkoism was a disreputable minority view, but was pushed into mass adoption for political reasons. Exactly the same applies to climate change denial.
In fact it's worth quoting his comments on that.
No, it really isn't. Crichton is not an expert in this field. He has extremely minor scientific qualifications. Writing bad science fiction does not qualify someone to discuss these matters.
"If we don't take drastic action, the planet is doomed, only a few people have been paid by Big Oil to question this truth"
The planet isn't doomed, but there could be nasty wars over land and water, and the migration of hundreds of millions.
As for the Big Oil comment, that isn't too far from the truth. Take the case of Philip Cooney's editing of climate change reports to tone them down, and then left to work for ExxonMobil.
And finally, there's something implicitly totalitarian about the idea that we know the absolute truth.
No-one is claiming that.
So relying on the consensus is unreliable
No, relying on the consensus is the only sensible thing to do. Trying to equate Lomborg with Galileo is outrageous.
and using the scientific consensus to justify radically altering the world economy is the road to serfdom quite frankly, no matter how altruistic the people doing it think they are.
It isn't a matter of reducing the world economy to serfdom. Examples of what can be done is to develop hybrid or far better milage cars (something the USA is hopeless at) and switch to wider use of nuclear power. There is no serfdom in that at all.
Really, what the hell do you think weather is? How do you think one forecasts it? What are these things you call "maths?"
Weather is not climate. It is modelling at a different scale.
Meteorology and climatology are different areas of atmospheric science.
You'd be surprised that "Climatologist" is not a common PhD. Most "Climatologists" have their degrees in "Meteorology."
So what? It is very common for specialists to have degrees in different subjects, after which they gain broader experience. I have published work in biochemical simulations, but my PhD is in Botany!
I can't and won't prove that every meteorologist studies "volcanism, glaciation and biological fluxes of CO2," but if you look in my links, you will see that some do, even at the undergraduate level.
"Some do" is not good enough. I mentioned those things because they are vital for an understanding of climate. They are not optional extras.
I understand if you don't want to look at the undergraduate courses and course requirements that I laid out for you. At least pretend like you did. You could even dig a little deeper to find the graduate study.
Don't worry, I have.
Your hair-splitting is not analogous to Physics and Math. It is more analogous to Particle Physics and Materials Science, or maybe better yet Particle Physics and Quantum Physics.
It is not hair splitting, and you seem to want to deliberately mix things up.
Let me try another analogy. If meteorology is like the study of turbulence (small scale), climatology is like the study of aerodynamics (broader scale).
This is the level of our discourse. I only suggested that one man had enough experience to be listened to, and that it was odd that people are tossing his views and pointing to those of someone with no experience.
Why is it odd? If his area of expertise is not the area he is expressing opinions about, it seems reasonable.
Now I have to prove that meteorology is at least as close to climatology as being elected to the office of Vice President.
No, you have to prove meteorology is equivalent to the climatology practised by those who advise Al Gore. He is not claiming to be a scientist; he is claiming to present the ideas of scientists. My point was not that we need believe him - he is a politician - but believe those who have studied climate who say he is right.
Oh yeah, by the way, Mars is warming too.
This precisely illustrates why meteorologists aren't climatologists. It is not splitting hairs - it involved different knowledge. Mars is warming because of changes in solar irradiation. This is cyclical, well understood, and taken into account in climate change models. Someone who had studied climate as against weather would know that.
Listen to whomever you want. Run around like a chicken with your head cut off. What pisses ME off is that Global Warming is being used as a smoke screen for far more important environmental issues.
No, listening to whomever you want is just what you are doing, and it is poor science. Science is about accepting that there will always be dissenting opinions, but it is up to experts in that field to judge those opinions. The truth is not a 'beauty contest' where you simply pick the view that you you most like.
Physicists are mathematicians. They need maths to do what they do. But they do far more than maths.
Climatologists are meteorologists. They need to understand weather to do what they do, but they do far more than weather.
I repeat, for the last time:
Show me where meteorologists study vulcanism, glaciation and biological fluxes of CO2, or take back calling me 'Jackass'.
Your choice.
Or perhaps you could come clean with any link to the oil industry, or your personal worries about climate change which are so strong you deny scientific evidence.
Climatologists ARE meteorologists jackass. Take a look at Penn State's curriculum and classes if you doubt me.
Yes, of course they are. I did not deny that they weren't.
You are completely missing the point, which is that meteorologists aren't climatologists! It is a bigger and broader field, requiring more expertise. If you disagree, perhaps you would like to point out where in that curriculum the students cover vulcanology, or glaciation, or biological mechanisms of CO2 and methane production and sequestration?
How about you either point out where those are covered, or take back the 'Jackass'?
If you have built your career on a particular study, and it turns out that that study doesn't mean what you originally thought it did, then it is a life-changing moment.
You are confusing two separate things:
(1) That research in an area is important (2) That a result of the research is important
These are totally different things.
Climate research will continue to be important, no matter what the interpretation of the data.
By this logic, someone who calls plays in football is also unqualified to recruit players. Or about a billion other jobs that require thinking about more than one particular topic.
I know in the battle of "Doctorate with decades of real experience and a proven track record in weather historical research and prediction" vs. "Al Gore and his anonymous army of almost universally agreeing experts", well, I think you know who I would go with.
Just because someone sees something differently than the "almost universal" truth, does that mean they are automatically wrong AND evil?
Please, don't joint the moronic army of climate change deniers. Don't be stupid.
Get educated. Realise how good science works. People who deny what a vast majority of scientists say does pretty much always defines them as being wrong.
And, if they are denying that for political or economic reasons (as almost all of them are), yes, it does make them evil.
Science is not a matter of 'pick who you believe and go with that'. If you don't believe what virtually all scientists in this area believe, which is that climate change is real and man made, then that either makes you (1) some genius who has stumbled on an alternate interpretation of the data (2) someone who does not understands how science works, or (3) someone so dumb they believe whatever comforts them.
I don't believe you are a genius, so which is it - science disbeliever, or dumb?
Grey is a meteorologist. It's not like he is a damned psychologist.
Yes, actually, it is. A meteorologist is someone who studies weather. It is an observational science. Weather is NOT climate, as it does not involve anything like the same principles of physics, chemistry, or biology, It is a fundamentally different scale.
Climate research is absolutely important in his work, and his view on their findings is likely better informed than say... Al Gore, a politician.
Al Gore's views have been backed almost unversally backed by experts in climate.
The question you need to ask yourself is.... why do you personally want so much to deny climate change? What are your personal motives for wanting to reject the implications?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they rely on the precipitation caused by the Himalayas; the glaciers are incidendal.
No they aren't, as they act as a water store. Also, glacier decline indicates lack of precipitation.
Never heard about glaciers in Himalaya are going.
. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4346211
They may be diminishing, but they will still be there in all probability.
Irrelevant. Any reduction in water volume would be serious.
Shorter winters would give us more crops, as tropical lands already have higher productivity than temperate and cold ones.
You mean like Saharan Africa?
Tropical lands only have higher productivity when there is more rainfall.
You may be thinking too narrowly. Look at some of the modern functional languages such as SML or Haskell. In those languages, symbols like +, -, and * are all just function calls semantically, but syntactically they are operators (as is any sequence of non-alphanumeric characters, approximately). You can actually define the operator precedence at compile time, and the parser will adjust accordingly. You can still define these functions however you like, just like in Smalltalk. (Of course, these languages do not have runtime function dispatch or anything like that, but this is orthogonal to parsing issues).
I am not saying this can't be done, or that it does not happen in other languages. All I am saying
Smalltalk does not have operators - there is no syntactic difference between operators and methods, so this can't be done in Smalltalk.
That's absurd. You are confusing parsing and evaluation. I don't care how Smalltalk evaluates the expression [2 + 3], I just want the text "2 + 3 * 5" to be parsed as [2 + (3 * 5)] rather than [(2 + 3) * 5]. Either way, Smalltalk can then internally send some messages around to actually perform the computation.
Yes, this would make the parser more complicated. Hey! I don't care! Parsers are designed for humans, not the other way around.
You are confusing methods with operators. Smalltalk has no operators. Smalltalk parses all expressions as method calls - there is simply no mechanism in the Smalltalk language to assign different operator priorities. The text '2 + 3 * 5' is a sequence of method calls, just like any others. To attempt to parse it as if it were an arithmetic expression is meaningless. For example, what about "A * B"? Sure, that "*" looks like a math operation, but "A" might be of a non-mathematical class, and * might have another meaning entirely. If you attempt to impose mathematical parsing, you will break the incredible flexibility and purity of Smalltalk, in which symbols like +=/ and * can be redefined or used as method names for any class.
The Smalltalk parser can't be set to recognise math expressions because math operators are simply method names. It can't even say 'assume a math expression if we are dealing with numbers' because the types of objects aren't known at parse time.
I for myself still think global warming could be nice, after the initial, inevitable adaptation pains. More crops, more habitable lands.
Global warming does not imply more crops, or more habitable lands. It implies less. For example, a significant fraction of the world relies on the glaciers in the Himalayas for water. If those go, there will be vastly less habitable lands.
It does exactly the same thing in Python, C++, and C#, yet those languages have regular operator precedence. How you define operator precedence is unrelated to how arithmetic is implemented at the object level.
Sure, but Smalltalk is a simpler language. It does not have operators - only messages. The distinction is only required when you introduce additional syntactical complexity.
Smalltalk could easily have defined "2 + 3 * 4" to mean "2 + ( 3 * 4 )". Or, it could simply have disallowed "2 + 3 * 4" altogether and required parentheses "(2 + 3) * 4" or "2 + (3 * 4)" in all cases involving arithmetic operators (we're only talking about "+", "-", "*", and "/"). Strict left-to-right evaluation was a bad idea and too error prone
No, it could not easily have defined those.
Strict left-to-right simply is a matter of convention, and is not error prone. People easily switch to different conventions, as shown by the success of reverse polish on some systems.
After Great Britain banned most guns in 1997, making armed self-defense punishable as murder, violence skyrocketed because criminals know that law abiding citizens have been disarmed.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. Firstly, violent crimes have fallen dramatically since 1997. Secondly, law abiding citizens in Britain have not been 'disarmed', as they never were armed. Gun ownership in the UK was always limited to a tiny minority, and so criminals never expected to be confronted with guns. The banning of guns in 1997 was simply to remove the very few private firearms that could still cause problems (as happened at Dunblane).
If you are basing any kind of case for mass ownership of guns (a crazy idea in any society) on this, you are well out of line.
The Sunday Times of London reported on the new black market in guns: "Up to 3 million illegal guns are in circulation in Britain, leading to a rise in drive-by shootings and gangland-style execution."
And you assume mass ownership of guns would help that?
There has been such a heavy increase in the use of knives for violent attacks that new laws have been passed giving police the power to search anyone for knives in designated areas.
Totally irrelevant. The banning of a few privately-owned rifles for sport (which is what happened in the UK) would have had no influence on this.
Where are we going? Who is taking us there? Should we be kicking and screaming?
Celebrating, in my view. Perhaps you might manage to get your murder rates down to that of other western democracies.
Just about the only thing that Smalltalk got wrong was to use strict left-to-right evaluation for arithmetic expressions; a better compromise might have been simply to require arithmetic expressions to be fully parenthesized.
That is because Smalltalk doesn't have arithmetic expressions - it only has sending messages to objects:
2 + 3
is sending the message '+' to the object '2' with the argument '3'.
Introducing the idea of actual arithmetic expressions into Smalltalk would make it far more complicated.
But there's absolutely zero chance that humans can organise reducing C02 emissions by 2050. Even if the US and Western Europe went back to a pre industrial civilisation, China and India will increase their emissions so much that there will still be an increase.
Actually, reducing emissions isn't hard at all. A switch to mainly nuclear power, combined with a hydrogen system for cars would do it.
Well the Greenland ice shet is melting anyway. I've read wildely varying figures for sea level rise, some mm per year, some metres. Even if the sea levels rise, both of us work in countries which can afford low tech solutions like levies. Personally, I live in a country which can even maintain them correctly too.
Good for us. What about India, Bangladesh and others?
And look at the error bar on that - there's a big difference between 2 degress and 9 degrees I think. I looked up the Permian extinction, and one theory is a 5 degree C increase triggered it.
You seem to be ignoring what I have posted before. Of course there are error bars; the point is that some predictions are more extreme than others, but consequences of the extreme ones are too dire to ignore.
Most of the extreme figures quoted in the media assume some kind of positive feedback system (based on methane hydrate gasification IIRC) and we don't know if that will happen.
I am happy for you. You are able to selectively believe whatever makes you feel most comfortable. We don't know that it will happen, but we know that it could happen.
You also keep doing what I have already said is extremely poor science - you are picking and choosing individual viewpoints to match what you want to believe: you don't like Scientific American, you listen to John Maddox (John Maddox is respectable, but he has a minority view).
If you aren't personally an expert, it only makes sense to listen to the consensus. The difficulty with your approach is that those who agree with you are getting fewer and fewer....
It's a big jump to policy recommendations from this level of understanding of climate, which is really my only problem with the debate.
No, it isn't. Because, as I have said before, those temperature changes are just global averages. Even small changes (up to 1C) will result in major melting of polar ice, with potentially disastrous consequences.
My argument is that if you select for scientists called "experts on climate change", of course that person will believe that climate change is real and serious. Just like if you ask a professor of theology, of course they will believe in God. Their careers are essentially based on that axiom. It's also hard to get a grant if you don't believe in the thing you are getting paid to study.
You are wildly out here. I am not talking about experts on 'climate change', I am talking about experts on 'climate'. My point is that virtually all experts on 'climate' believe it is changing. Also, the phrase 'climate change' does not imply anyone automatically assumes positive change. Climate scientists have also discovered negative changes. But now, positive changes dominate.
But if you ask a statistician, or a biologist, a physicist or a chemist what they think of the arguments for climate change being real and serious, they are much more skeptical. But they're not skeptical of other bits of science outside their specialty. That makes me trust the study of climate change less than say physics. That and the fact that when I actually look at the data, it's mostly random with a slight trend. I can't really explain any further than that.
This is just a plain wrong generalisation. It is not random with a slight trend, and if you think it is, you are looking at the wrong data, or looking at the data the wrong way.
What can happen is that people confuse apparently noisy data with randomness. With the appropriate statistical techniques, accurate trend predictions can be made from what looks like noise, using methods recognised throughout science.
Your generalisation is wrong because publications regarding global warming have appeared in top-rank interdisciplinary journals, like Nature. Publications only get there if they are of the highest quality, and recognised as such by those outside of the field.
It's not convincing to me, it's not convincing to the people I discuss it with.
I simply don't understand what is not convincing? Global warming? It is happening - just look at glaciers and the thinning of the arctic. That CO2 traps heat? That is basic chemistry and physics. That we are producting vast amounts and changing the atmosphere? That is plain fact.
"No respectable scientist is denying" is an appeal to authority. There's also an implicit ad hominem there, since you're calling all the scientists who disagree with you non respectable.
No, you are drawing the wrong conclusions here. In the past many respectable scientists did disagree. All that has happened is that growing evidence has convinced them. If you want to read the opinion of a real honest skeptic on this matter, read what Michael Shermer says. He has made a career on being skeptical about scientific fashions, and he is very well respected in science, unlike Crichton. Like you he assumed much of the concern about global warming effects was from extreme environmentalists, and damaging. However, look at what he now says:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B557 A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000
"How the evidence for anthropogenic global warming has converged to cause this environmental skeptic to make a cognitive flip"
"The striking before-and-after photographs showing the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance."
"And biologist Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006) reveals how he went from being a skeptical environmentalist to a believing activist as incontrovertible data linking the increase of carbon dioxide to global warming accumulated in the past decade."
"According to Flannery, even if we reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by 70 percent by 2050, average global temperatures will increase between two and nine degrees by 2100. This rise co
I think that 'consensus' views tend to be simplistic to the point of being wrong. It's not so much that the majority of scientists are wrong, just that in this case the media tries to turn what they say into "Imminent catastophe: We rich people are to blame". The scientists I've spoken to see things as being much less clear cut, and the climate as being essentially unpredictable.
I am talking about a scientific consensus, not a media consensus.
The climate is not essentially unpredictable; if it was, there would not be such effort put into modelling it!
People have been claiming stuff like that for ages. Michael Crichton may not be an expert on climate change, but he's smart enough to dig up cases of people like Paul Ehrlich claiming imminent mass starvation in America, commodity prices going through the roof and so on, and he's been wrong every time.
Sorry, but science doesn't work like that. It isn't a series of individuals picking quotes, or individual opinions. Of course some individuals will be wrong.
Yes they are. The whole tone of the greens' argument is obnoxious
I am not talking about Greens, I am talking about scientists.
Surely anyone with an interest in science or economics can discuss them? If you only ask experts on climate change if climate change is a serious problem, aren't you introducing a bit of bias?
Of course you aren't! I really can't understand what you are trying to say here - that non-experts have views that should be taken into account? Why? Does not understanding something have some sort of merit?
The problem with Crichton is that his views get unfairly publicised because he is a well-known author, and a science fiction writer. The addition problem is that he writes very bad science in his fiction - if anything that should be a reason to reject his views.
it's all about how the consensus agrees with me, the only people that don't are paid shills. The evidence I've seen doesn't really convince me that we need to do anything drastic, it's as simple as that. There's a load of uncertainty in this stuff, and the everyone seems to be be picking the worst case result of climate change to make the problem seem much more serious than it likely is, and then using a mixture of ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority to silence people that question them.
Firstly, you can't both talk about uncertainty, and then say 'its as simple as that'. It is not simple. There is indeed uncertainty, but we have to deal with the range of predictions.
There are no appeals to authority - the appeals are to data and statistics that are there for anyone to analyse.
No respectable scientist is denying that climate is changing, or that human-produced CO2 is a significant contributor to that. The issue is by how much it will change. Predictions range within a series of extremes, from a few degrees C to 5,6 or more.
This does not look too bad, but the problem is that it is an average global change - the change at the poles is far greater, and is already happening, and already melting substantial amounts of ice.
The problem is that some of the less-likely predictions (very high rise) could have consequences that could be terrible. They simply can't be ignored.
Don't get sidetracked by 'the greens'. That is not the issue. We have a problem to deal with, and if we start to deal with it now it won't be too painful, and could even bring major economic benefits. However, ignoring it by cherry-picking the views that are comforting. Ignore the greens; ignore the media - go direct to the science. If you bypass the media you will find an almost unanimous view that climate change is happening and is serious.
No, I didn't.
No Boeing aren't using Java for flight systems, except on unmanned vehicles. Java won't ever be DO-178B certified so the FAA wouldn't allow it near an actual flight system.
Those are still flight systems. My point was not that Boeing are going to use Java for all real-time or embedded systems - it was that Java is not simply a language for beginners.
Memory management based on garbage collection interfere with real-time requirements, so you won't find java-based flight systems.
This isn't the case. Garbage collection in real-time Java is well-established, as in the example of PERC.
You most certainly did deny that they aren't. Right there in the first quoted sentence.
No, I didn't. I was denying that meteorologists aren't necessarily climatologists. But all climatologists have to be meteorologists, at least to some extent. Climatology is a big set of skills, one of which should be meteorology.
Hardly. One accurate contrary observation invalidates a categorical claim. Sagan's red-eyed dictum
promotes a fallacy of herd dominance. Sagan may "require" what he likes, but the truth is the truth
quite independently of his "requirements".
What you are stating isn't science. One contrary observation by itself is of no consequence, unless it can be duplicated or replicated.
C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy.
Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.
This is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. (Anyway C++ is more like driving without a seatbelt - no matter how good you are you will end up getting more hurt when things go wrong sooner or later).
Java and C# are not inefficient, and anyone who claims that they are is years out of date.
It may be cool and nerdy to hack around with pointers and manual memory management, but in almost all cases it is totally unecessary, and to claim that it is required for performance is to seriously underestimate the power of modern VMs and garbage collection systems.
Far from removing the need to think, languages like Java and C# allow the developer to think about what really matters - developing good algorithms, rather than having to deal with much irrelevant housekeeping. The vastly improved error handling of the languages also allows the developer to concentrate on fixing bugs, rather than trying to trace where the bugs are (I remember my days as a DOS C++ developer, when pointer errors led to a jammed PC and interesting random screen graphics). For example, developing and debugging multi-threaded applications in Java is orders of magnitude simpler than the equivalent in C++.
And it is interesting who you consider beginners. As an example, perhaps you would like to explain to Boeing, who are are using Java for flight systems, replacing C++ and Ada, why they are 'beginners'?
But we can't do experiments on the Earth's climate, so the correcting mechanism is broken.
No, it isn't. One can run models against what is there, and correct if the model doesn't reproduce it. For example, in the astrosciences models are run of galaxy formation. We can't run actual experiments on galaxies, but that does not make the models any less valid.
E.g. Lysenkoism, creationism, eugenics and planned economies where interesting ideas. Basing public policy on them, especially public policy which was not democratically alterable was disasterous.
It was disastrous because they were extremely poor science.
It's same with global warming, global cooling, population explosion, population collapse, running out of resources. A few of these are probably correct in fact, but I don't think we'll no enough about any of them to avoid them causing a disaster in the future.
Well, many who are lifelong experts in these subjects do think we know enough about them - who are you to say this?
Actually, I think the problem is trying to use the provisional truth that's the best that science can give you, using it to make predictions into the distant future, and then making drastic economic changes now based on those predictions.
I wish it was the distant future, but it isn't. We are talking about significant climatic changes within a century, not millenia.
Actually, population explosion is my favourite example. Mao decided that the Chinese population was growing too fast when actually it was probably static or falling. He decided to take drastic action, the one child policy, enforced by things like forced abortions. This was a catastophe for the Chinese, and it may yet cause them economic problems in the future because it will cause their society to age before it gets rich. Their gender balance is seriously skewed too.
I can't see the point here.... is it that because the Chinese have poorly implemented population control, that unlimited growth of population is good?
Come to think of it global cooling is kind of interesting too. Just imagine if global warming is real and we had made public policy decisions based on the consensus on global cooling in the 1970s.
There was no consensus on global cooling in the 1970s. This is a myth.
The point is that if you don't really know how to predict stuff into the distant future, you should not have a policy that's determined by those predictions.
But the policies would be extremely beneficial, encouraging energy economy and a reduced reliance on oil and gas from unstable regions.
But I think science probably corrects itself ok in the absence of this. It happened with global cooling, if global warming is similar flawed, that will get corrected too.
Global warming is not some sort of proposal that needs to be tested and corrected, it is unquestionably actually happening.
Yeah, but if the BBC covered that like they covered climate change they'd say "the overwhelming consensus is that the old theory is mostly correct, and can be fixed with a few minor changes. Only a small minority of scientists believe in so called quantum theory, which is a much more radical revision"
Why is there this continued assumption that minority views are always right? Sure, quantum mechanics was once a minority view, but so was the belief that the earth is hollow. Not all minority views turn out right - in fact almost none of them do.
You don't get to pick the minority view you want simply to support your political or economic beliefs.
A better example, as Michael Crichton pointed out, would be the consensus on eugenics or Lysenkoism, which was used to justify some very evil actions.
Those examples help back the case I am trying to make. Lysenkoism was a disreputable minority view, but was pushed into mass adoption for political reasons. Exactly the same applies to climate change denial.
In fact it's worth quoting his comments on that.
No, it really isn't. Crichton is not an expert in this field. He has extremely minor scientific qualifications. Writing bad science fiction does not qualify someone to discuss these matters.
"If we don't take drastic action, the planet is doomed, only a few people have been paid by Big Oil to question this truth"
The planet isn't doomed, but there could be nasty wars over land and water, and the migration of hundreds of millions.
As for the Big Oil comment, that isn't too far from the truth. Take the case of Philip Cooney's editing of climate change reports to tone them down, and then left to work for ExxonMobil.
And finally, there's something implicitly totalitarian about the idea that we know the absolute truth.
No-one is claiming that.
So relying on the consensus is unreliable
No, relying on the consensus is the only sensible thing to do. Trying to equate Lomborg with Galileo is outrageous.
and using the scientific consensus to justify radically altering the world economy is the road to serfdom quite frankly, no matter how altruistic the people doing it think they are.
It isn't a matter of reducing the world economy to serfdom. Examples of what can be done is to develop hybrid or far better milage cars (something the USA is hopeless at) and switch to wider use of nuclear power. There is no serfdom in that at all.
Really, what the hell do you think weather is? How do you think one forecasts it? What are these things you call "maths?"
Weather is not climate. It is modelling at a different scale.
Meteorology and climatology are different areas of atmospheric science.
You'd be surprised that "Climatologist" is not a common PhD. Most "Climatologists" have their degrees in "Meteorology."
So what? It is very common for specialists to have degrees in different subjects, after which they gain broader experience. I have published work in biochemical simulations, but my PhD is in Botany!
I can't and won't prove that every meteorologist studies "volcanism, glaciation and biological fluxes of CO2," but if you look in my links, you will see that some do, even at the undergraduate level.
"Some do" is not good enough. I mentioned those things because they are vital for an understanding of climate. They are not optional extras.
I understand if you don't want to look at the undergraduate courses and course requirements that I laid out for you. At least pretend like you did. You could even dig a little deeper to find the graduate study.
Don't worry, I have.
Your hair-splitting is not analogous to Physics and Math. It is more analogous to Particle Physics and Materials Science, or maybe better yet Particle Physics and Quantum Physics.
It is not hair splitting, and you seem to want to deliberately mix things up.
Let me try another analogy. If meteorology is like the study of turbulence (small scale), climatology is like the study of aerodynamics (broader scale).
This is the level of our discourse. I only suggested that one man had enough experience to be listened to, and that it was odd that people are tossing his views and pointing to those of someone with no experience.
Why is it odd? If his area of expertise is not the area he is expressing opinions about, it seems reasonable.
Now I have to prove that meteorology is at least as close to climatology as being elected to the office of Vice President.
No, you have to prove meteorology is equivalent to the climatology practised by those who advise Al Gore. He is not claiming to be a scientist; he is claiming to present the ideas of scientists. My point was not that we need believe him - he is a politician - but believe those who have studied climate who say he is right.
Oh yeah, by the way, Mars is warming too.
This precisely illustrates why meteorologists aren't climatologists. It is not splitting hairs - it involved different knowledge. Mars is warming because of changes in solar irradiation. This is cyclical, well understood, and taken into account in climate change models. Someone who had studied climate as against weather would know that.
Listen to whomever you want. Run around like a chicken with your head cut off. What pisses ME off is that Global Warming is being used as a smoke screen for far more important environmental issues.
No, listening to whomever you want is just what you are doing, and it is poor science. Science is about accepting that there will always be dissenting opinions, but it is up to experts in that field to judge those opinions. The truth is not a 'beauty contest' where you simply pick the view that you you most like.
Let me explain, by analogy.
Physicists are mathematicians. They need maths to do what they do. But they do far more than maths.
Climatologists are meteorologists. They need to understand weather to do what they do, but they do far more than weather.
I repeat, for the last time:
Show me where meteorologists study vulcanism, glaciation and biological fluxes of CO2, or take back calling me 'Jackass'.
Your choice.
Or perhaps you could come clean with any link to the oil industry, or your personal worries about climate change which are so strong you deny scientific evidence.
Umm yeah, whatever. But that sub-thread was nothing to do with climate research.
Which was why it puzzled me....
Climatologists ARE meteorologists jackass. Take a look at Penn State's curriculum and classes if you doubt me.
Yes, of course they are. I did not deny that they weren't.
You are completely missing the point, which is that meteorologists aren't climatologists! It is a bigger and broader field, requiring more expertise. If you disagree, perhaps you would like to point out where in that curriculum the students cover vulcanology, or glaciation, or biological mechanisms of CO2 and methane production and sequestration?
How about you either point out where those are covered, or take back the 'Jackass'?
Your choice.
If you have built your career on a particular study, and it turns out that that study doesn't mean what you originally thought it did, then it is a life-changing moment.
You are confusing two separate things:
(1) That research in an area is important
(2) That a result of the research is important
These are totally different things.
Climate research will continue to be important, no matter what the interpretation of the data.
Are you trolling?
No, but I suspect you are.
WTF?
By this logic, someone who calls plays in football is also unqualified to recruit players. Or about a billion other jobs that require thinking about more than one particular topic.
I know in the battle of "Doctorate with decades of real experience and a proven track record in weather historical research and prediction" vs. "Al Gore and his anonymous army of almost universally agreeing experts", well, I think you know who I would go with.
Just because someone sees something differently than the "almost universal" truth, does that mean they are automatically wrong AND evil?
Please, don't joint the moronic army of climate change deniers. Don't be stupid.
Get educated. Realise how good science works. People who deny what a vast majority of scientists say does pretty much always defines them as being wrong.
And, if they are denying that for political or economic reasons (as almost all of them are), yes, it does make them evil.
Science is not a matter of 'pick who you believe and go with that'. If you don't believe what virtually all scientists in this area believe, which is that climate change is real and man made, then that either makes you (1) some genius who has stumbled on an alternate interpretation of the data (2) someone who does not understands how science works, or (3) someone so dumb they believe whatever comforts them.
I don't believe you are a genius, so which is it - science disbeliever, or dumb?
Grey is a meteorologist. It's not like he is a damned psychologist.
.... why do you personally want so much to deny climate change? What are your personal motives for wanting to reject the implications?
Yes, actually, it is. A meteorologist is someone who studies weather. It is an observational science. Weather is NOT climate, as it does not involve anything like the same principles of physics, chemistry, or biology, It is a fundamentally different scale.
Climate research is absolutely important in his work, and his view on their findings is likely better informed than say... Al Gore, a politician.
Al Gore's views have been backed almost unversally backed by experts in climate.
The question you need to ask yourself is