Hint: the best livestock eat vegetation that we can't digest. They convert grasses into tasty meat.
If grass will grow there, something we can digest can grow there -- and an a more biologically diverse manner than pastureland. Veganic permaculture is far more efficient and sustainable than any form of animal agriculture.
The person making the prediction (being asked the question) in this case may not be a client scientist, but he has a track record of accurately describing temperature in the future.
Citation needed. Googling the guy's name turns up stories like this -- from ESPN, for cryin' out loud, not from some site with a climate agenda:
Bastardi markets private forecasting services to corporations by boasting of his correct calls but saying nothing of his failed forecasts. For instance, Bastardi praises himself for predicting that Tropical Storm Humberto would grow into a hurricane in 2007, while neglecting to note that his primary hurricane forecast for 2007 was "the U.S. Gulf Coast is at much higher risk of destructive tropical weather" than in past years. Instead, 2007 hurricane activity on the Gulf Coast was far lower than in 2004 and 2005.
Bastardi is not a climatologist -- and his "objections", as outlined in the article, sure show it. (For more on his cluelessness, see here.) Using him as an example of debate about climate science is like citing a medical doctor who does not accept evolution (like, for example, shining nutjob Ron Paul) as evidence that there's some "debate" about the reality of evolution among biologists.
The guy gets paid big bucks because he has a habit of correctly predicting weather
that is a military officer that offered aid and comfort to a foreign person
Offering aid and comfort to a foreign person is not a crime. Indeed, the U.S. government offers aid and comfort to foreign persons all the time in relief efforts.
Offering aid and comfort to an enemy of the U.S. would be treason, but as the U.S. is not in a legally declared state of war, it's debatable that are any legal "enemies"; certainly WikiLeaks, a news organization, cannot sanely be called an "enemy" of the United States.
We know who is responsible for the leaks, so let's take care of that problem.
No one has been convicted of anything. We don't know who is responsible for the leaks, nor have we yet heard arguments in court about whether such leaking was legally justified.
That's standard practice, and it's for his own good. Just because he's being held pre-trial doesn't mean that the other inmates aren't going to stab him to death before the trial.
Read up on the conditions under which Manning is being held; it's not for his safety, it's psychological torture. Whether the goal is to break him so he'll say whatever they want, or just to leave him a ruined shell as a warning to the next person who might try to embarrass the U.S. government, there is nothing "standard" about prolonged solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, or denial of exercise. Convicted murderers and rapists are not dealt with this harshly; there's no way that an accused whistle-blower should be.
Also, speedy trial, doesn't preclude a thorough investigation, the provision was there to ensure that the government didn't endlessly delay a trial while doing a superficial investigation.
The requirement for a speedy trail is exactly in part so that the state can't implement the "sentence first, we'll have the trial later and figure out what he's guilty of then" strategy they are employing. Manning has been held for seven months; courts have generally held that delays longer that six to eight months are unconstututional. If the feds have a case, put it to the jury; if they don't, let Manning go.
"We need some sort of disciplined critical thinking to decide what questions about the universe we "ought" to explore..." - No we don't.
We cannot explore all questions about the universe, we don't have the time, materials, and scientist-power. Should we leave the question of where to devote our limited resources to chance?
Do you think that ethics/moral philosophy can be cleanly separated from other fields of philosophy? Can you know what's "right" without logic, epistemology, and aesthetics? I don't think so.
Meanwhile, the engineer is creating ways to save lives, feed millions, and travel to Mars.
And also ways to kill millions, to destroy the biosphere's ability to sustainably renew itself, and to broadcast propaganda and mind-numbing "entertainment" to the population so that it thinks all this is hunky-dory.
Science is a tool for finding out about the universe; engineering is a tool to making changes in the world around us. But we need some sort of disciplined critical thinking to decide what questions about the universe we "ought" to explore, and what changes in the world we "ought" to make. That should be the domain of philosophy. Unfortunately, when you get into areas like epistemology, philosophy as it is practiced today indeed tends too much towards the navel-gazing.
By the way, for anyone who hasn't read it yet: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (affiliate link) is a book every techie should read. Fixing a motorcycle is close enough to fixing code that the book should produce a number of "ahas!" for the hacker; and the narrator (or rather, his earlier self) gets in and wrestles with some of those old Greek guys.
I don't think humans need anyway near as much meat as we consume in the western world. Prehaps simply reducing intake would be enough.
Human need zero meat. Vegetarians have been demonstrating this since at least the time of Pythagoras, and despite the propaganda from the animal flesh industry and from those with an irrational religious or cultural attachment to flesh-eating, the scientific consensus is quite explicit::
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." -- ADA position paper on Vegetarian Diets
I support medical cannabis -- indeed, I support the end of all drug prohibition laws. But how is there a "right to privacy" any more than for any other pharmacetuical? Every pharmacy has stuff with more street value than weed, yet the locations of licensed pharmacies are public records, aren't they?
Looking at the history of science, I wouldn't be terrible shocked if we learned that either GR or SM, or both, are incomplete.
We know that they're incomplete, actually, since GR and QM give us different models of gravity.
And I wouldn't be at all shocked if we come up with observations that are well outside of either theory.
But If those observations are made by the naked eye in a locale that's not somehow extreme (extreme gravity, extreme temperature, extreme electromagnetic fields, etc.), then I would be shocked.
I once gave the Bally's box office $135 to see George Carlin do a show that, I was disappointed to realize, I'd seen him do on HBO six months before. I'm sure he got a fat slice of that.
Yeah. And I paid all this money to see this band one time, and I was disappointed to realize I'd heard them do the same songs on their last CD.
That, of course, depends on what we mean by "religion". If we mean supernaturalist dogma, sure, that's all about delusions regarding the external objective universe.
If on the other hand we mean a set of practices and attitudes meant to create an experience of connection to ourselves, our fellow sentient beings, and the universe in general, then no; what brings us that sort of religion is the removal of delusions regarding the internal subjective universe. Consult your local Zen master or pantheist for more information. (Or read my book when it comes out.:-))
Separating these two component of religion is part of our task for the 21st century. If supernaturalist dogma prevails, humanity fails, unable to use science; but if spiritual and social alienation prevails, humanity also fails, unable to know to what use science should be put.
I would like to invite you to add to that notion - parks are general an example of doing good - by listing a few areas where you are under the impression the government is doing good.
I heard about this thing that government-funded researchers were working on called the ARPANET. Sounded kind of neat. Might end up having an impact on the world.
I certainly have my disputes with the federal government (as I discuss, for example, here: "the government that gave us the Dredd Scott decision, Prohibition, McCarthyism, MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments with LSD, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam police action, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the House banking and Post Office scandals, the Waco [assault], and 20-page MILSPECS for brownies"). But anyone who puts forth the proposition "the federal government has never done anything worthwhile!" on an Internet forum, as I have often seen, demonstrates ignorance that is so ironic that it's entertaining.
Ever hear of someone being charged with a hate crime for hitting a white person?
Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.
All this hate crime bullshit is nothing but racism, pure and simple. You hit or kill someone, you go to jail. It shouldn't matter what color or sex they are.
The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"
Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.
But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)
Ever hear of someone being charged with a hate crime for hitting a white person?
Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.
All this hate crime bullshit is nothing but racism, pure and simple. You hit or kill someone, you go to jail. It shouldn't matter what color or sex they are.
The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"
Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.
But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)
Perhaps 80% of people understand that the release of most of these documents had nothing to do with holding the government accountable, but rather was intended as a detrimental action against the government.
80% of the people may believe this; but as it is manifestly untrue, they do not "understand" anything.
Wikileaks broke a federal law. So did the New York Times. It has nothing to do with freedom of the press - these organisations violated federal law.
You do not understand freedom of the press. Any law that says "you can't publish this information about the government" is a violation of the freedom of the press -- and ergo inherently unconstitutional and invalid.
It's quite narcissistic of you to think that since you think it's good and 80% of America thinks it's bad, that 80% must just be stupid or misinformed
Neither legal nor morals truths can be determined by polls.
1) The sun is the biggest driver of the Earth's Climate
I have never heard anyone say otherwise. No sun == a very stable, if cold, climate. However, changes in solar irradiation have not been sufficient to explain observed changes in the climate.
2) There is already more than enough CO2 for a 'full' greenhouse effect so more will not make it 'worse.'
This statement is gibberish. See the explanation here: "Modern data show that even in the parts of the infrared spectrum where water vapor and CO2 are effective, only a fraction of the heat radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth is blocked before it escapes into space. And that is beside the point anyway. The greenhouse process works regardless of whether the passage of radiation is saturated in lower layers. As explained above, the energy received at the Earth's surface must eventually work its way back up to the higher layers where radiation does slip out easily. Adding some greenhouse gas to those high, thin layers must warm the planet no matter what happens lower down."
3) The Earth has been cooling since 2007.
Nope. In point of fact, 2010 was the warmest year on record. But such a short-term trend is irrelevant. A cooling trend over three days in May doesn't mean North American is not warming up as summer comes.
4) Current computer models of the Earth's long-term climate are not necessarily correct.
I've not heard anyone suggest that computer models of anything are 100% accurate.
Of course, these facts are inconvenient to believers of various irrational ideologies popular in the U.S. -- fundamentalist Christianity, laissez-faire capitalisms, etc. -- and so are likely to be rejected as heretical.
1) according to the linked wik entry on the Dalton Minimum, "Recent papers have suggested that a rise in volcanism was largely responsible for the cooling trend." I.e., not a decrease in solar activity.
2) Local climate != global climate. Many models expect that even as global temperatures rise, England will cool, due to shifts in the Gulf Stream.
And if Eugene had won the election, he would have killed 20,000,000 detractors and history would be re-written to prove that he has always ruled the United States since A.D. 1 when he founded it to commemorate Jesus' birth.
And you base this theory on what actions of Eugene Debs?
Lenin/Stalin/Mao proved Eugene's jailing to be the correct action.
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all came to power after Debs was active. He was not a student of theirs, and his ideas were nothing like theirs. He was jailed for making a speech against conscription and militarism -- not an opinion that would have made him popular with Lenin, Stalin, or Mao.
Thank you for the fine example of the way that most Americans are conditioned to go into paranoid delusions whenever socialism is mentioned.
Eugene V. Debs was a founder of the IWW and the Socialist presidential candidate 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 -- running that last campaign from the prison cell where ha had been placed for daring to make a speech opposing the World War I draft. He was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and it's no surprise you're not sure who he was: as his life story is an embarrassment to American capitalism and authoritarianism, it's unlikely he was more than a footnote in your high school history book.
Slashdot Mirror
If grass will grow there, something we can digest can grow there -- and an a more biologically diverse manner than pastureland. Veganic permaculture is far more efficient and sustainable than any form of animal agriculture.
Citation needed. Googling the guy's name turns up stories like this -- from ESPN, for cryin' out loud, not from some site with a climate agenda:
Bastardi is not a climatologist -- and his "objections", as outlined in the article, sure show it. (For more on his cluelessness, see here.) Using him as an example of debate about climate science is like citing a medical doctor who does not accept evolution (like, for example, shining nutjob Ron Paul) as evidence that there's some "debate" about the reality of evolution among biologists.
Questionable.
Offering aid and comfort to a foreign person is not a crime. Indeed, the U.S. government offers aid and comfort to foreign persons all the time in relief efforts.
Offering aid and comfort to an enemy of the U.S. would be treason, but as the U.S. is not in a legally declared state of war, it's debatable that are any legal "enemies"; certainly WikiLeaks, a news organization, cannot sanely be called an "enemy" of the United States.
No one has been convicted of anything. We don't know who is responsible for the leaks, nor have we yet heard arguments in court about whether such leaking was legally justified.
Read up on the conditions under which Manning is being held; it's not for his safety, it's psychological torture. Whether the goal is to break him so he'll say whatever they want, or just to leave him a ruined shell as a warning to the next person who might try to embarrass the U.S. government, there is nothing "standard" about prolonged solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, or denial of exercise. Convicted murderers and rapists are not dealt with this harshly; there's no way that an accused whistle-blower should be.
The requirement for a speedy trail is exactly in part so that the state can't implement the "sentence first, we'll have the trial later and figure out what he's guilty of then" strategy they are employing. Manning has been held for seven months; courts have generally held that delays longer that six to eight months are unconstututional. If the feds have a case, put it to the jury; if they don't, let Manning go.
We cannot explore all questions about the universe, we don't have the time, materials, and scientist-power. Should we leave the question of where to devote our limited resources to chance?
Do you think that ethics/moral philosophy can be cleanly separated from other fields of philosophy? Can you know what's "right" without logic, epistemology, and aesthetics? I don't think so.
And also ways to kill millions, to destroy the biosphere's ability to sustainably renew itself, and to broadcast propaganda and mind-numbing "entertainment" to the population so that it thinks all this is hunky-dory.
Science is a tool for finding out about the universe; engineering is a tool to making changes in the world around us. But we need some sort of disciplined critical thinking to decide what questions about the universe we "ought" to explore, and what changes in the world we "ought" to make. That should be the domain of philosophy. Unfortunately, when you get into areas like epistemology, philosophy as it is practiced today indeed tends too much towards the navel-gazing.
By the way, for anyone who hasn't read it yet: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (affiliate link) is a book every techie should read. Fixing a motorcycle is close enough to fixing code that the book should produce a number of "ahas!" for the hacker; and the narrator (or rather, his earlier self) gets in and wrestles with some of those old Greek guys.
Human need zero meat. Vegetarians have been demonstrating this since at least the time of Pythagoras, and despite the propaganda from the animal flesh industry and from those with an irrational religious or cultural attachment to flesh-eating, the scientific consensus is quite explicit::
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes." -- ADA position paper on Vegetarian Diets
I support medical cannabis -- indeed, I support the end of all drug prohibition laws. But how is there a "right to privacy" any more than for any other pharmacetuical? Every pharmacy has stuff with more street value than weed, yet the locations of licensed pharmacies are public records, aren't they?
We know that they're incomplete, actually, since GR and QM give us different models of gravity.
And I wouldn't be at all shocked if we come up with observations that are well outside of either theory.
But If those observations are made by the naked eye in a locale that's not somehow extreme (extreme gravity, extreme temperature, extreme electromagnetic fields, etc.), then I would be shocked.
Yeah. And I paid all this money to see this band one time, and I was disappointed to realize I'd heard them do the same songs on their last CD.
Seriously: WTF were you expecting?
That, of course, depends on what we mean by "religion". If we mean supernaturalist dogma, sure, that's all about delusions regarding the external objective universe.
If on the other hand we mean a set of practices and attitudes meant to create an experience of connection to ourselves, our fellow sentient beings, and the universe in general, then no; what brings us that sort of religion is the removal of delusions regarding the internal subjective universe. Consult your local Zen master or pantheist for more information. (Or read my book when it comes out.:-))
Separating these two component of religion is part of our task for the 21st century. If supernaturalist dogma prevails, humanity fails, unable to use science; but if spiritual and social alienation prevails, humanity also fails, unable to know to what use science should be put.
I heard about this thing that government-funded researchers were working on called the ARPANET. Sounded kind of neat. Might end up having an impact on the world.
I certainly have my disputes with the federal government (as I discuss, for example, here: "the government that gave us the Dredd Scott decision, Prohibition, McCarthyism, MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments with LSD, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam police action, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the House banking and Post Office scandals, the Waco [assault], and 20-page MILSPECS for brownies"). But anyone who puts forth the proposition "the federal government has never done anything worthwhile!" on an Internet forum, as I have often seen, demonstrates ignorance that is so ironic that it's entertaining.
Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.
Or you could use a little Google-fu before you spout off about how "I've never heard about XYZ happening!" You would have quickly found out, for example, about Ronald Taylor, a black man who in 2000 was charged with hate crimes after a murder spree targeting white people. He was convicted and sentenced to death; one of the prosecution's arguments against the insanity defense was that he was "competent" enough to only target whites.
The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"
Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.
But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)
Yes, actually. May I suggest that next time you have a question about crime statistics, you head over to the FBI's website and scope out the Uniform Crime Reports? There, you could learn that for 2009, there were 668 victims of racially motivated hate crimes against whites, including 3 murders, 2 rapes, 113 aggravated assaults, and 191 simple assaults. I don't know how many of these were solved, charged, or convicted, but appearance in the UCR means the cops labeled it a hate crime.
Or you could use a little Google-fu before you spout off about how "I've never heard about XYZ happening!" You would have quickly found out, for example, about Ronald Taylor, a black man who in 2000 was charged with hate crimes after a murder spree targeting white people. He was convicted and sentenced to death; one of the prosecution's arguments against the insanity defense was that he was "competent" enough to only target whites.
The problem is that that wasn't happening. People have been known to get away with beating and killing gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., because of indifference in broader society. There's also the fact that such crimes are often intended not just as assaults against individuals but as threats against other members of that group: "This'll teach those (gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc.) what happens if they try to (move here, vote, get a job, fall in love with the wrong type of person, etc.)!"
Now, I don't think laws that just increase penalties for crimes against gays, blacks, Jews, Mexicans, women, etc., are the right solution. Assaulting people is a crime; threatening people is a crime; the law ought to be crafted such that assaulting people in a manner that is intended as a threat to a group is prosecuted as both an assault and a threat.
But we have to acknowledge that there is a problem that these laws are trying to solve. And not all hate crime laws are about stiffer penalties based on "protected classes"; some are about enforcement. A law that makes cops arrest assaulters, even if the assaultee was gay, black, Jewish, Mexican, a women, etc., is a good hate crime law. A law that gather statistics on hate crimes is a good hate crime law. A law that calls for different types of rehabilitation efforts for a hate crime perpetrator versus someone needing anger management therapy might, depending on details, be a good hate crime law. (That's pretending, of course, that our prison-industrial complex gave a damn about rehabilitation.)
Even evince is starting to suffer from bloat. I've recently gone back to using xpdf on my desktop box, and put ePDFView on my netbook.
Does that include when he says something racist? Or anti-science? Or ahistorical and against the separation of church and state?
Ron Paul is a fscking dingbat. That fact that he's right in this issue doesn't change that.
80% of the people may believe this; but as it is manifestly untrue, they do not "understand" anything.
You do not understand freedom of the press. Any law that says "you can't publish this information about the government" is a violation of the freedom of the press -- and ergo inherently unconstitutional and invalid.
Neither legal nor morals truths can be determined by polls.
I have never heard anyone say otherwise. No sun == a very stable, if cold, climate. However, changes in solar irradiation have not been sufficient to explain observed changes in the climate.
This statement is gibberish. See the explanation here: "Modern data show that even in the parts of the infrared spectrum where water vapor and CO2 are effective, only a fraction of the heat radiation emitted from the surface of the Earth is blocked before it escapes into space. And that is beside the point anyway. The greenhouse process works regardless of whether the passage of radiation is saturated in lower layers. As explained above, the energy received at the Earth's surface must eventually work its way back up to the higher layers where radiation does slip out easily. Adding some greenhouse gas to those high, thin layers must warm the planet no matter what happens lower down."
Nope. In point of fact, 2010 was the warmest year on record. But such a short-term trend is irrelevant. A cooling trend over three days in May doesn't mean North American is not warming up as summer comes.
I've not heard anyone suggest that computer models of anything are 100% accurate.
Of course, these facts are inconvenient to believers of various irrational ideologies popular in the U.S. -- fundamentalist Christianity, laissez-faire capitalisms, etc. -- and so are likely to be rejected as heretical.
TFS contains at least two major errors:
1) according to the linked wik entry on the Dalton Minimum, "Recent papers have suggested that a rise in volcanism was largely responsible for the cooling trend." I.e., not a decrease in solar activity.
2) Local climate != global climate. Many models expect that even as global temperatures rise, England will cool, due to shifts in the Gulf Stream.
And you base this theory on what actions of Eugene Debs?
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao all came to power after Debs was active. He was not a student of theirs, and his ideas were nothing like theirs. He was jailed for making a speech against conscription and militarism -- not an opinion that would have made him popular with Lenin, Stalin, or Mao.
Thank you for the fine example of the way that most Americans are conditioned to go into paranoid delusions whenever socialism is mentioned.
commodore64_love, I think this may be the first time we've found ourselves in violent agreement. :-) Cheers, sir.
You make a lot of interesting accusations about Obama. How about backing some of them up with sources? This is the web -- learn hypertext, please.
Eugene V. Debs was a founder of the IWW and the Socialist presidential candidate 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 -- running that last campaign from the prison cell where ha had been placed for daring to make a speech opposing the World War I draft. He was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and it's no surprise you're not sure who he was: as his life story is an embarrassment to American capitalism and authoritarianism, it's unlikely he was more than a footnote in your high school history book.