I don't really care what people see about me on Facebook. I'm well aware of the privacy issues.
However, I can see some reasons why people would be concerned.
My biggest concern is that there are plenty of things on Facebook that I can choose to opt out of. I can choose who can see my photos, who can see my online status, who can see my wall, and plenty of other options. I don't see any option to hide or opt out of the log of my events being posted on my profile page. I am very capable of manually deleting events, but in order to fit the privacy scheme of the rest of the site, I should have the ability to opt out altogether if I so choose.
I certainly don't care that someone can see that I insulted the Saint Louis Cardinals on some girl's wall or that I joined a group for Royals fans. But I do believe that the privacy options on this feature are inconsistent with the options available for other features around the site.
EPO is a performance enhancing substance and is banned from the Tour de France. Armstrong received EPO while he had cancer to treat some of the side-effects of chemotherapy. So, yes, technically Armstrong did receive performance enhancing drugs while undergoing treatment for cancer.
That said, anyone who thinks he was using EPO to cheat while he was undergoing chemotherapy is crazy. Prescribing EPO to patients undergoing chemotherapy isn't unusual.
The problem is that hurricanes aren't only affected by sea-surface temperatures. There's a lot of other factors such as vertical wind shear that make a difference.
The El-Nino phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) correlates with increased vertical wind shear over the Atlantic, for example. While waters in the eastern Pacific are warmer, tropical cyclone activity is actually suppressed over the Atlantic. This is one example of a way in which tropical cyclone activity can be suppressed.
It doesn't mean there won't be stronger hurricanes, but there's a lot of evidence to possibly suggest otherwise. And there's long-term oscillations such as the PDO that play a large role in hurricane activity.
Warmer water is far from the only factor in strength and number of tropical cyclones.
Small-scale features can impact larger scale features, but in general, they don't have a huge effect. For example, a supercell thunderstorm over Oklahoma isn't going to cause more than a tiny ripple in the large scale pattern of longwaves over the Northern Hemisphere. Synoptic scale features can affect planetary scale features, and mesoscale features can affect synoptic scale features, but in general, small features don't have a big effect on large features. And large scale features persist much longer than small scale features.
Ah. I'll admit I'm a little surprised that some of that can't be defined by whoever is running the model. I do some research with regional/mesoscale models such as the WRF. The WRF is run at many places at a variety of resolutions. I've seen as coarse as a 22 km grid spacing and as fine as a 1 km grid spacing.
Out of curiosity, has the idea come up of perhaps nesting grids and allowing the effects of things in the nested grid to propagate into the larger grid? It would allow one to better study the behavior of phenomena over a small area while maintaining a coarser grid spacing over the rest of the planet. I don't know which models permit this other than the extremely old NGM model. Maybe such a thing is hard to implement, but if it could be done, it would allow for studying the effects of smaller features on climate while still allowing the simulation to run quickly on standard PCs/Macs.
Thanks for your answer and thanks for your time, sir.
There is little evidence to conclusively. Nice try. I'd like to think you're joking, but you might be trolling.
Even if, say, global warming increased the temperature of the oceans, other factors (such as perhaps increased vertical wind shear) or a change in the location of the ITCZ (probably shifting poleward in a warmer planet) would affect the climatology of tropical cyclones.
And there is reason to believe that greater hurricane activity is due to natural cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
Wow. I don't even really know what to say to this.
In the troposphere, while it's typically pretty stable, there are cases where it is unstable and particularly strong convection occurs. One case of particularly strong upward motion is supercell thunderstorms. But the upward motion tends to slow and stop at or slightly above the tropopause. Temperature decreases with height in the troposphere, but increases with height in the stratosphere. While momentum carries strong updrafts into the very lower troposphere, even the air in the strongest updrafts don't continue very far before descending again.
In other words, there's not a whole lot of mass exchange occurring between the troposphere and stratosphere.
Understanding this exchange and the sources and sinks of water vapor and other chemicals in the stratosphere is one way to better improve our study of things in the stratosphere.
And you greatly overestimate the accuracy of any numerical model on a computer. It is very impressive, given the large amount of parameterizations and approximations made, that computer models produce as good of output and forecast the weather as well as they do.
The winds in any cyclone, tropical or otherwise, are driven by the pressure gradient force. Tropical Cyclone Tracy had a minimum central pressure of about 950 mb but because of its compact size, there was a very strong pressure gradient. Typhoon Tip, on the other hand, had a minimum central pressure of 870 mb, but was much larger. Neither size nor central pressure are the sole factor in determining the maximum wind speed in a cyclone; but when considered together along with the influence of friction at the surface, they do control the wind speed. Typically when meteorologists compare the strength of typical cyclones, they look at either the maximum sustained winds or the minimum central pressure. And both are perfectly valid ways of comparing the strength of tropical cyclones.
And for what it's worth, observations are far better today than they were in 1900 when the powerful hurricane hit Galveston. Many of our estimates of the strength of tropical cyclones at sea are based off satellite imagery, which of course did not exist in 1900. However, it is perfectly valid to say that Hurricane Wilma had the lowest minimum central pressure of any cyclone observed in the Atlantic. It is a fact that there has not been a lower minimum central pressure observed.
With regards to lightning, a great deal of tropical cyclones have been observed in the Atlantic and in other basins around the world. The use of hurricane hunter aircraft is nothing new. And the article is merely saying that the three systems mentioned had something different from other systems observed and that meteorologists don't know why. It never said that other tropical cyclones in the past didn't have significant lightning activity like these three. It just said we haven't observed it. And considering that meteorological records are kept rather carefully, we can be pretty confident that we haven't seen such behavior before.
Traffic might be predictable somewhat in Saint Louis. I used to live there. I know this.
That being said, I do see some uses for this. I can't count the number of times I've seen the 70 backed up in rural Missouri because of accidents. Maybe it's not that much use in the city of Saint Louis, but it might be worthwhile in, say, Montgomery or Callaway counties which the 70 runs through.
While someone here surely knows the difference between a.gov and.com, most people don't. Many people just assume everything ends in.com.
Awhile back, whitehouse.com actually was a porn site. I don't think an unsuspecting person hoping to view the White House's website would be amused by being instead directed to a porn site. Instead of forcefully taking domains, some government agencies choose to buy the.com,.net, and.org names as well as their.gov.
I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
So what you're trying to say is the science of paleoclimatology is a hoax?
What about the use of fossils and ice core samples to get information about past climates and the composition of the atmosphere in the Earth's past? Is that all a right-wing hoax, too?
My point wasn't to say that humans aren't causing climate change. I believe they are, too. There is, however, quite a bit of uncertainty about how much of an effect human activities have on the climate. There's a lot of reports coming out of imminent doom because of "global warming," and that's what I'm arguing against.
There's a lot of possible effects of global climate change due to an increased greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect works because carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and radiates it out. Some of this radiation is radiated back toward the surface. There are many other greenhouse gases in play, too. Carbon dioxide isn't a particularly potent greenhouse gas compared to water vapor. The reason a big deal is made about carbon dioxide, however, is because it has a much longer residency time in the atmosphere than water vapor. A warmer Earth due to an increased greenhouse effect may, however, lead to greater evaporation and a greater amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This is one concern that's worth mentioning.
It's probably incorrect to refer to this form of global climate change as global warming. What it is doing, instead, is unmoderating the Earth's climate.
It's a fact that the north atlantic drift is slowing. That's an ocean current that is a branch of the gulf stream. This current keeps the British Isles warmer than they would otherwise be for the latitude they are at. It is believed that the melting of some of the ice caps will release large amounts of fresh water into the ocean, changing its composition, and slowing or cutting off the north atlantic drift. This means that instead of warming, that part of Europe will become cooler.
On the other hand, many people believe (with some uncertainty here) that the center of some continents will become drier. I live on the central plains of the USA, which is already arid. Should climate change occur quickly, it may have a significant effect on agriculture in this part of the USA.
My two points here, and in my previous comment, were not to say global climate change isn't occuring or that humans aren't causing some of it. My point was to say that the rate of climate change caused by human activity isn't really known and to refer to the climate change as "global warming" isn't really correct.
I wouldn't say the climatologists are particularly foolish. I am a meteorologist. Many aspects of meteorology are largely misunderstood by the media and general public. The concept of "global warming" is one of the most common misunderstandings.
Without a doubt, the climate of the Earth is rapidly changing. Records show this very clearly. This is not a point for debate.
Also there is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing. Once again, records of this show the change very clearly. This is not up for debate.
The problem comes up when showing a link between the two and establishing causation. It is impossible to deny that human activities change the atmosphere and have some effect on the weather and climate. The actual amount of effect, however, is unknown. There are many cycles which naturally occur in the weather and in the climate. While some of these cycles last only a few months or a few years, such as ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), some cycles may last decades or longer. We are aware of cycles such as ENSO because it only takes a few years for an El Nino to transition to a La Nina (which actually lasts longer than the El Nino phase) and back into an El Nino. There are probably many other cycles in the climate that we are not even aware of. Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible that we are merely in one phase of a naturally occurring cycle which will reverse itself at some point.
Many factors play a role in the climate around the Earth. These include the atmospheric composition, albedo, ocean circulation, solar output, and many other things. While changes in the atmosphere can cause climate change, changes in these other factors may enhance or oppose the changes. One of the most famous climate changes of the recent past was the little ice age. This period of cooling wasn't caused by human activity. Instead, it is believed that solar output decreased and had a very significant effect on the Earth's climate.
During much of the Earth's past, the Earth has been dominated by either tropical or polar climates. The period of balance we are in right now is actually somewhat unusual. Given the history of the Earth, it is hardly unreasonable to expect the climate would once again trend toward one of the two extremes. This has occurred for many millions of years without any influence of humans. There is no reason to expect that this behavior would cease because humans now inhabit the Earth.
Global warming is a very misleading term. There are many questions about how global climate change, if caused by humans, would actually occur. People have even speculated about possible global cooling. One theory, which some evidence seems to dispute, suggests that "global warming" will cause an increase in clouds. The increased albedo from the clouds will counteract the warming and might even cause cooling. This theory is disputed, but is one of many theories about how climate change, if caused by humans, might play out.
None of these arguments are meant to say we shouldn't scale back emissions. While we don't know if human activities are a major player in global climate change, we also don't know that they aren't playing a huge role in it. Furthermore, it is in our interests to minimize our changes to the environment and to the atmosphere because the theory of humans causing global climate change is plausible. It is in everyone's interest to reduse emissions, anyways, because many of the chemicals entering our atmosphere and hydosphere are toxic. I'm all for finding cleaner sources of energy and for cutting back on human activities such as clearing forested areas.
There are plenty of good reasons to reduce emissions and protect our environment without resorting to scare tactics. While you may have found an example of a "climatologist" making fallacious arguments, many of the climatologists disputing "global warming" caused by human activities aren't all that crazy.
The shaky part is that they're voiding the warranty on the hardware and the software if you install software you compile. It makes plenty of sense to not have any warranty on the software but the shaky part is that the warranty on the hardware would be voided as well. It's not totally unreasonable, but I think it's shaky.
I can't comment on the device failing as a result of loading the code.
That being said, the part about voiding the warranty is hardly unreasonable. The unit is designed to run software that DISH Network distributes with it and not other software. Since GPL software is distributed without any warranty, and loading the "third party" software voids the original warranty, you would not have any warranty on the unit. I use the term third party software in a loose sense because it could be the same software but since they didn't compile it, they don't support it.
It's a little shaky, I agree, but not necessary as anti-GPL as it initially sounds. Minus the part about causing the unit to fail, that is.
It's misleading that the article suggests NOAA just scrapped a policy that stated what the National Weather Service's role would be in relation to private industry. A law had been in effect defining these roles, but the law had expired. In absence of such regulation, NOAA found an applicable OMB requiring them to disseminate the data in an open format. NOAA has made an effort to comply with the regulation and follow the law.
It is absolutely false that the NWS spends lots of time producing forecasts of warm and sunny. This is nothing short of a lie. Forecasts are issued twice daily in most situations. It will still be necessary for the NWS to produce a forecast in all cases because even if it's warm and sunny today and tomorrow, it's very useful for example to monitor and be aware of a storm system that will have an impact a few days out. Forecasts are produced more often or are updated when a change in the weather is expected, such as showers and thunderstorms. This is referred to as nowcasting and is a necessary function of the NWS. While I can't cite this as a fact, I would expect a much greater amount of time is spent nowcasting or forecasting significant weather than is spent producing these forecasts of warm and sunny.
The National Hurricane Center disseminates information about tropical cyclones and is not disseminating these forecasts of warm and sunny that the private industry suggests NOAA spends too much time doing. The NHC has an extremely important function and is working to improve its products for the purpose of providing better alerts to the general public about approaching threats. To suggest the NHC is hampered by such duties as producing warm and sunny forecasts is a lie.
Furthermore, it is extremely important that accurate weather data be available to emergency managers and to weather spotters. These are important beneficiaries of data such as radar data and nowcasts produced by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center. While emergency managers will likely pay the fee and get access to data provided by private industry, it is less likely that spotters, which are the general public, will be willing to pay. Effectively, this could cripple an important means of detecting severe weather. I guarantee that without accurate radar data, I'm not going to try to spot a tornado and relay the information in; it's just too dangerous.
I am a meteorologist and I have also heard the opinions of many other meteorologists that I attend school with. The consensus about companies such as the Weather Channel is that they do not provide accurate timely data. Their on-air personalities generally have little knowledge of meteorology. They operate their own forecast model which my fellow meteorologists do not believe produces quality and reasonably accurate solutions. And I've heard that many of the actual meteorologists at the Weather Channel lost their jobs. Anyone who's watched their broadcasts probably has noticed their tendencies to focus on the East and West Coasts even when the middle of the country is receiving severe weather. They hardly do a reliable job of disseminating information about potentially dangerous weather to the public. Is this really who we want in charge of forecasting and providing information to the public?
I find this bill to be based around lies and to have the ability to be extremely harmful to the ability to detect severe weather. The Senate should not approve this bill.
If I want to run a radio station and interfere with licensed stations that are already operating, I ought to be able to. After all, the air waves ought to be free and I'm exercising my free speech right. The FCC has no business telling me I can't broadcast that station, even if it interferes with other stations. That's my right to free speech.
That's the same logic you're using. It's absurd.
Many spammers abuse machines they're not supposed to have access to. Just because someone doesn't secure their machine doesn't mean it's okay for me to abuse it. Just like if you leave the door to your house unlocked, it doesn't give me the right to enter and take your possessions. Just like the house, computers are private property. If the owner expressly gives me access, then I may use his or her machine. Otherwise, I'm tresspassing.
Also, as another user pointed out in this thread, spammers can often interfere with legitimate mail being delivered. Bombarding a mail server with spam can prevent legitimate mail from reaching its intended destination. Spam interferes with legitimate traffic.
Do spammers have the right to interfere with legitimate traffic to deliver their spam? It's kind of like the unlicensed radio station which is broadcasting illegally.
I was only asking why this hasn't been done before with Firefox and why it's taken so long for a major ISP to embrace it. One would think ISPs would be quick to encourage their customers to use alternate browsers and to make the transition to them as easy as possible. If nothing else, ISPs generally don't want worms and other harmful traffic on their networks.
I've posted elsewhere that this idea isn't exactly new. A few years ago, Southwestern Bell was sending branded versions of Netscape Communicator to users who signed up for their service. It was clearly Netscape, however, and not branded to look like some SWBell browser. It just had a couple of modified pictures, including a chance to the splash screen when opening Netscape to indicate it had been distributed by SWBell. The splash screen, however, retained the Netscape logo. I'm assuming this same sort of thing is happening with Firefox.
This isn't exactly new. When I signed up for dialup service through Southwestern Bell back around 1996 or so, I was mailed a CD with Netscape Communicator 4 branded with SWBell logos. I wonder what took so long to have this done with Firefox. After all, Firefox can trace its roots to Netscape. It is good to see Firefox being embraced by a rather large ISP, however.
Feel free to say I'm crazy, but I've got a slightly more sinister way to look at things.
Bush isn't using the war to keep people's minds off the economy so much as he's using it to affect the economy. The United States is an economic powerhouse -- we've got loads of natural resources, excellent infrastructure, and a large force of skilled labor. By all means, we've got the ability to produce enough for every American to live a life of luxury, far more than most of us live today.
War, however, is a means to waste economic resources and manpower. It's a way to funnel those resources away from the American people and away from improving the quality of life for people abroad. The more wars you fight, the more you keep the economy down.
If Americans lived in luxury, a lot of the class differences would disappear. It would take away a lot of power from people like Bush and his cronies. By fighting wars and wasting economic resources, the economy is kept in check enough to maintain the class differences needed to keep the wealthy in power. And it's all done under the disguise of patriotism and protecting America.
I agree with your points. I don't have a problem with the NCDC charging for some data. As you say, a lot of data is amassed and the storage requirements for that data are very large. Also when we're talking about data such as radar data, they make Nexrad level II data available freely, and that's a lot of bandwidth used to send it. I don't have a problem with them charging for some things.
It's no more unreasonable than paying a small fee if I make a request under the FOIA.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really care what people see about me on Facebook. I'm well aware of the privacy issues.
However, I can see some reasons why people would be concerned.
My biggest concern is that there are plenty of things on Facebook that I can choose to opt out of. I can choose who can see my photos, who can see my online status, who can see my wall, and plenty of other options. I don't see any option to hide or opt out of the log of my events being posted on my profile page. I am very capable of manually deleting events, but in order to fit the privacy scheme of the rest of the site, I should have the ability to opt out altogether if I so choose.
I certainly don't care that someone can see that I insulted the Saint Louis Cardinals on some girl's wall or that I joined a group for Royals fans. But I do believe that the privacy options on this feature are inconsistent with the options available for other features around the site.
EPO is a performance enhancing substance and is banned from the Tour de France. Armstrong received EPO while he had cancer to treat some of the side-effects of chemotherapy. So, yes, technically Armstrong did receive performance enhancing drugs while undergoing treatment for cancer.
That said, anyone who thinks he was using EPO to cheat while he was undergoing chemotherapy is crazy. Prescribing EPO to patients undergoing chemotherapy isn't unusual.
The problem is that hurricanes aren't only affected by sea-surface temperatures. There's a lot of other factors such as vertical wind shear that make a difference.
The El-Nino phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) correlates with increased vertical wind shear over the Atlantic, for example. While waters in the eastern Pacific are warmer, tropical cyclone activity is actually suppressed over the Atlantic. This is one example of a way in which tropical cyclone activity can be suppressed.
It doesn't mean there won't be stronger hurricanes, but there's a lot of evidence to possibly suggest otherwise. And there's long-term oscillations such as the PDO that play a large role in hurricane activity.
Warmer water is far from the only factor in strength and number of tropical cyclones.
There's a LOT more that goes into the development of a hurricane than warm water. Did you even read my post?
I encourage you to read NOAA's summary of recent research on the topic: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/G3.html
If you still doubt it, there's a long list of articles published by scientists in reputable peer-reviewed journals in the meteorological community.
Small-scale features can impact larger scale features, but in general, they don't have a huge effect. For example, a supercell thunderstorm over Oklahoma isn't going to cause more than a tiny ripple in the large scale pattern of longwaves over the Northern Hemisphere. Synoptic scale features can affect planetary scale features, and mesoscale features can affect synoptic scale features, but in general, small features don't have a big effect on large features. And large scale features persist much longer than small scale features.
Ah. I'll admit I'm a little surprised that some of that can't be defined by whoever is running the model. I do some research with regional/mesoscale models such as the WRF. The WRF is run at many places at a variety of resolutions. I've seen as coarse as a 22 km grid spacing and as fine as a 1 km grid spacing.
Out of curiosity, has the idea come up of perhaps nesting grids and allowing the effects of things in the nested grid to propagate into the larger grid? It would allow one to better study the behavior of phenomena over a small area while maintaining a coarser grid spacing over the rest of the planet. I don't know which models permit this other than the extremely old NGM model. Maybe such a thing is hard to implement, but if it could be done, it would allow for studying the effects of smaller features on climate while still allowing the simulation to run quickly on standard PCs/Macs.
Thanks for your answer and thanks for your time, sir.
There is little evidence to conclusively. Nice try. I'd like to think you're joking, but you might be trolling.
Even if, say, global warming increased the temperature of the oceans, other factors (such as perhaps increased vertical wind shear) or a change in the location of the ITCZ (probably shifting poleward in a warmer planet) would affect the climatology of tropical cyclones.
And there is reason to believe that greater hurricane activity is due to natural cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
Isn't it possible to change the grid spacing to something finer? One or two grid points isn't sufficient to resolve a wave.
Wow. I don't even really know what to say to this.
In the troposphere, while it's typically pretty stable, there are cases where it is unstable and particularly strong convection occurs. One case of particularly strong upward motion is supercell thunderstorms. But the upward motion tends to slow and stop at or slightly above the tropopause. Temperature decreases with height in the troposphere, but increases with height in the stratosphere. While momentum carries strong updrafts into the very lower troposphere, even the air in the strongest updrafts don't continue very far before descending again.
In other words, there's not a whole lot of mass exchange occurring between the troposphere and stratosphere.
Understanding this exchange and the sources and sinks of water vapor and other chemicals in the stratosphere is one way to better improve our study of things in the stratosphere.
And you greatly overestimate the accuracy of any numerical model on a computer. It is very impressive, given the large amount of parameterizations and approximations made, that computer models produce as good of output and forecast the weather as well as they do.
The winds in any cyclone, tropical or otherwise, are driven by the pressure gradient force. Tropical Cyclone Tracy had a minimum central pressure of about 950 mb but because of its compact size, there was a very strong pressure gradient. Typhoon Tip, on the other hand, had a minimum central pressure of 870 mb, but was much larger. Neither size nor central pressure are the sole factor in determining the maximum wind speed in a cyclone; but when considered together along with the influence of friction at the surface, they do control the wind speed. Typically when meteorologists compare the strength of typical cyclones, they look at either the maximum sustained winds or the minimum central pressure. And both are perfectly valid ways of comparing the strength of tropical cyclones.
And for what it's worth, observations are far better today than they were in 1900 when the powerful hurricane hit Galveston. Many of our estimates of the strength of tropical cyclones at sea are based off satellite imagery, which of course did not exist in 1900. However, it is perfectly valid to say that Hurricane Wilma had the lowest minimum central pressure of any cyclone observed in the Atlantic. It is a fact that there has not been a lower minimum central pressure observed.
With regards to lightning, a great deal of tropical cyclones have been observed in the Atlantic and in other basins around the world. The use of hurricane hunter aircraft is nothing new. And the article is merely saying that the three systems mentioned had something different from other systems observed and that meteorologists don't know why. It never said that other tropical cyclones in the past didn't have significant lightning activity like these three. It just said we haven't observed it. And considering that meteorological records are kept rather carefully, we can be pretty confident that we haven't seen such behavior before.
Traffic might be predictable somewhat in Saint Louis. I used to live there. I know this.
That being said, I do see some uses for this. I can't count the number of times I've seen the 70 backed up in rural Missouri because of accidents. Maybe it's not that much use in the city of Saint Louis, but it might be worthwhile in, say, Montgomery or Callaway counties which the 70 runs through.
I'm not so sure it's such a bad thing.
.gov and .com, most people don't. Many people just assume everything ends in .com.
.com, .net, and .org names as well as their .gov.
While someone here surely knows the difference between a
Awhile back, whitehouse.com actually was a porn site. I don't think an unsuspecting person hoping to view the White House's website would be amused by being instead directed to a porn site. Instead of forcefully taking domains, some government agencies choose to buy the
I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
So what you're trying to say is the science of paleoclimatology is a hoax?
What about the use of fossils and ice core samples to get information about past climates and the composition of the atmosphere in the Earth's past? Is that all a right-wing hoax, too?
...is that our brains (like TVs) are inferior analog devices and human brains need to be replaced with new digital versions. :-)
My point wasn't to say that humans aren't causing climate change. I believe they are, too. There is, however, quite a bit of uncertainty about how much of an effect human activities have on the climate. There's a lot of reports coming out of imminent doom because of "global warming," and that's what I'm arguing against.
There's a lot of possible effects of global climate change due to an increased greenhouse effect.
The greenhouse effect works because carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation and radiates it out. Some of this radiation is radiated back toward the surface. There are many other greenhouse gases in play, too. Carbon dioxide isn't a particularly potent greenhouse gas compared to water vapor. The reason a big deal is made about carbon dioxide, however, is because it has a much longer residency time in the atmosphere than water vapor. A warmer Earth due to an increased greenhouse effect may, however, lead to greater evaporation and a greater amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This is one concern that's worth mentioning.
It's probably incorrect to refer to this form of global climate change as global warming. What it is doing, instead, is unmoderating the Earth's climate.
It's a fact that the north atlantic drift is slowing. That's an ocean current that is a branch of the gulf stream. This current keeps the British Isles warmer than they would otherwise be for the latitude they are at. It is believed that the melting of some of the ice caps will release large amounts of fresh water into the ocean, changing its composition, and slowing or cutting off the north atlantic drift. This means that instead of warming, that part of Europe will become cooler.
On the other hand, many people believe (with some uncertainty here) that the center of some continents will become drier. I live on the central plains of the USA, which is already arid. Should climate change occur quickly, it may have a significant effect on agriculture in this part of the USA.
My two points here, and in my previous comment, were not to say global climate change isn't occuring or that humans aren't causing some of it. My point was to say that the rate of climate change caused by human activity isn't really known and to refer to the climate change as "global warming" isn't really correct.
I wouldn't say the climatologists are particularly foolish. I am a meteorologist. Many aspects of meteorology are largely misunderstood by the media and general public. The concept of "global warming" is one of the most common misunderstandings.
Without a doubt, the climate of the Earth is rapidly changing. Records show this very clearly. This is not a point for debate.
Also there is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing. Once again, records of this show the change very clearly. This is not up for debate.
The problem comes up when showing a link between the two and establishing causation. It is impossible to deny that human activities change the atmosphere and have some effect on the weather and climate. The actual amount of effect, however, is unknown. There are many cycles which naturally occur in the weather and in the climate. While some of these cycles last only a few months or a few years, such as ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), some cycles may last decades or longer. We are aware of cycles such as ENSO because it only takes a few years for an El Nino to transition to a La Nina (which actually lasts longer than the El Nino phase) and back into an El Nino. There are probably many other cycles in the climate that we are not even aware of. Keeping this in mind, it is entirely possible that we are merely in one phase of a naturally occurring cycle which will reverse itself at some point.
Many factors play a role in the climate around the Earth. These include the atmospheric composition, albedo, ocean circulation, solar output, and many other things. While changes in the atmosphere can cause climate change, changes in these other factors may enhance or oppose the changes. One of the most famous climate changes of the recent past was the little ice age. This period of cooling wasn't caused by human activity. Instead, it is believed that solar output decreased and had a very significant effect on the Earth's climate.
During much of the Earth's past, the Earth has been dominated by either tropical or polar climates. The period of balance we are in right now is actually somewhat unusual. Given the history of the Earth, it is hardly unreasonable to expect the climate would once again trend toward one of the two extremes. This has occurred for many millions of years without any influence of humans. There is no reason to expect that this behavior would cease because humans now inhabit the Earth.
Global warming is a very misleading term. There are many questions about how global climate change, if caused by humans, would actually occur. People have even speculated about possible global cooling. One theory, which some evidence seems to dispute, suggests that "global warming" will cause an increase in clouds. The increased albedo from the clouds will counteract the warming and might even cause cooling. This theory is disputed, but is one of many theories about how climate change, if caused by humans, might play out.
None of these arguments are meant to say we shouldn't scale back emissions. While we don't know if human activities are a major player in global climate change, we also don't know that they aren't playing a huge role in it. Furthermore, it is in our interests to minimize our changes to the environment and to the atmosphere because the theory of humans causing global climate change is plausible. It is in everyone's interest to reduse emissions, anyways, because many of the chemicals entering our atmosphere and hydosphere are toxic. I'm all for finding cleaner sources of energy and for cutting back on human activities such as clearing forested areas.
There are plenty of good reasons to reduce emissions and protect our environment without resorting to scare tactics. While you may have found an example of a "climatologist" making fallacious arguments, many of the climatologists disputing "global warming" caused by human activities aren't all that crazy.
The shaky part is that they're voiding the warranty on the hardware and the software if you install software you compile. It makes plenty of sense to not have any warranty on the software but the shaky part is that the warranty on the hardware would be voided as well. It's not totally unreasonable, but I think it's shaky.
I can't comment on the device failing as a result of loading the code.
That being said, the part about voiding the warranty is hardly unreasonable. The unit is designed to run software that DISH Network distributes with it and not other software. Since GPL software is distributed without any warranty, and loading the "third party" software voids the original warranty, you would not have any warranty on the unit. I use the term third party software in a loose sense because it could be the same software but since they didn't compile it, they don't support it.
It's a little shaky, I agree, but not necessary as anti-GPL as it initially sounds. Minus the part about causing the unit to fail, that is.
It's misleading that the article suggests NOAA just scrapped a policy that stated what the National Weather Service's role would be in relation to private industry. A law had been in effect defining these roles, but the law had expired. In absence of such regulation, NOAA found an applicable OMB requiring them to disseminate the data in an open format. NOAA has made an effort to comply with the regulation and follow the law.
It is absolutely false that the NWS spends lots of time producing forecasts of warm and sunny. This is nothing short of a lie. Forecasts are issued twice daily in most situations. It will still be necessary for the NWS to produce a forecast in all cases because even if it's warm and sunny today and tomorrow, it's very useful for example to monitor and be aware of a storm system that will have an impact a few days out. Forecasts are produced more often or are updated when a change in the weather is expected, such as showers and thunderstorms. This is referred to as nowcasting and is a necessary function of the NWS. While I can't cite this as a fact, I would expect a much greater amount of time is spent nowcasting or forecasting significant weather than is spent producing these forecasts of warm and sunny.
The National Hurricane Center disseminates information about tropical cyclones and is not disseminating these forecasts of warm and sunny that the private industry suggests NOAA spends too much time doing. The NHC has an extremely important function and is working to improve its products for the purpose of providing better alerts to the general public about approaching threats. To suggest the NHC is hampered by such duties as producing warm and sunny forecasts is a lie.
Furthermore, it is extremely important that accurate weather data be available to emergency managers and to weather spotters. These are important beneficiaries of data such as radar data and nowcasts produced by the NWS and the Storm Prediction Center. While emergency managers will likely pay the fee and get access to data provided by private industry, it is less likely that spotters, which are the general public, will be willing to pay. Effectively, this could cripple an important means of detecting severe weather. I guarantee that without accurate radar data, I'm not going to try to spot a tornado and relay the information in; it's just too dangerous.
I am a meteorologist and I have also heard the opinions of many other meteorologists that I attend school with. The consensus about companies such as the Weather Channel is that they do not provide accurate timely data. Their on-air personalities generally have little knowledge of meteorology. They operate their own forecast model which my fellow meteorologists do not believe produces quality and reasonably accurate solutions. And I've heard that many of the actual meteorologists at the Weather Channel lost their jobs. Anyone who's watched their broadcasts probably has noticed their tendencies to focus on the East and West Coasts even when the middle of the country is receiving severe weather. They hardly do a reliable job of disseminating information about potentially dangerous weather to the public. Is this really who we want in charge of forecasting and providing information to the public?
I find this bill to be based around lies and to have the ability to be extremely harmful to the ability to detect severe weather. The Senate should not approve this bill.
If I want to run a radio station and interfere with licensed stations that are already operating, I ought to be able to. After all, the air waves ought to be free and I'm exercising my free speech right. The FCC has no business telling me I can't broadcast that station, even if it interferes with other stations. That's my right to free speech.
That's the same logic you're using. It's absurd.
Many spammers abuse machines they're not supposed to have access to. Just because someone doesn't secure their machine doesn't mean it's okay for me to abuse it. Just like if you leave the door to your house unlocked, it doesn't give me the right to enter and take your possessions. Just like the house, computers are private property. If the owner expressly gives me access, then I may use his or her machine. Otherwise, I'm tresspassing.
Also, as another user pointed out in this thread, spammers can often interfere with legitimate mail being delivered. Bombarding a mail server with spam can prevent legitimate mail from reaching its intended destination. Spam interferes with legitimate traffic.
Do spammers have the right to interfere with legitimate traffic to deliver their spam? It's kind of like the unlicensed radio station which is broadcasting illegally.
I was only asking why this hasn't been done before with Firefox and why it's taken so long for a major ISP to embrace it. One would think ISPs would be quick to encourage their customers to use alternate browsers and to make the transition to them as easy as possible. If nothing else, ISPs generally don't want worms and other harmful traffic on their networks.
I've posted elsewhere that this idea isn't exactly new. A few years ago, Southwestern Bell was sending branded versions of Netscape Communicator to users who signed up for their service. It was clearly Netscape, however, and not branded to look like some SWBell browser. It just had a couple of modified pictures, including a chance to the splash screen when opening Netscape to indicate it had been distributed by SWBell. The splash screen, however, retained the Netscape logo. I'm assuming this same sort of thing is happening with Firefox.
This isn't exactly new. When I signed up for dialup service through Southwestern Bell back around 1996 or so, I was mailed a CD with Netscape Communicator 4 branded with SWBell logos. I wonder what took so long to have this done with Firefox. After all, Firefox can trace its roots to Netscape. It is good to see Firefox being embraced by a rather large ISP, however.
Feel free to say I'm crazy, but I've got a slightly more sinister way to look at things.
Bush isn't using the war to keep people's minds off the economy so much as he's using it to affect the economy. The United States is an economic powerhouse -- we've got loads of natural resources, excellent infrastructure, and a large force of skilled labor. By all means, we've got the ability to produce enough for every American to live a life of luxury, far more than most of us live today.
War, however, is a means to waste economic resources and manpower. It's a way to funnel those resources away from the American people and away from improving the quality of life for people abroad. The more wars you fight, the more you keep the economy down.
If Americans lived in luxury, a lot of the class differences would disappear. It would take away a lot of power from people like Bush and his cronies. By fighting wars and wasting economic resources, the economy is kept in check enough to maintain the class differences needed to keep the wealthy in power. And it's all done under the disguise of patriotism and protecting America.
I agree with your points. I don't have a problem with the NCDC charging for some data. As you say, a lot of data is amassed and the storage requirements for that data are very large. Also when we're talking about data such as radar data, they make Nexrad level II data available freely, and that's a lot of bandwidth used to send it. I don't have a problem with them charging for some things.
It's no more unreasonable than paying a small fee if I make a request under the FOIA.