This isn't a simple math equation, the data is messy, there are inconsistencies, multiple versions, workarounds for known issues, and the occasional mistake.
If someone has an axe to grind it's easy to do the equivalent of quote-mining, and even if what they say can be shown to be completely and conclusively wrong, people will still buy it. The unfortunate truth is that even if you are completely right you're probably still better hiding your data from critics. The critics don't have to be right, they just have to throw up some FUD and claim the data backs them up.
I agree they should have handed over the data, but I also believe that there's a lot of ways for critics to hurt you even if the data is good.
It means that Jones was pissed off after years of dealing with people whom he felt had no interest in the data, but were only looking for anything that looked like an error so they could blow it as far out of proportion as possible.
Yes he regrets typing that message, and yes, they should be more open supplying the data. But if someone was asking me the equivalent of "hand me that shovel so I can start hitting you with it" I might be hesitant too.
Since everyone here is trashing the decision I figured I try to be the devils advocate.
Assuming the laptops do have a legitimate educational use I can see two motivations for a single platform.
1) Specific applications: They may intend to use specific applications that are only available on the mac, if this is the case I don't really agree since they should be able to find an alternative that runs on multiple platforms.
2) Support: I suspect this is the real reason. Let every student bring their own laptop, most are various versions of windows, a bunch more apples, maybe one or two linux, and very rarely something else entirely. Now students have to install app X for some class. Even if it's cross platform there's 5 different versions of windows, some unsupported and horribly out of date. Some can't connect to the wireless, others crash constantly, maybe having bad hardware, viruses everywhere, and the poor school admin has to worry about keeping all of these working of students are going to miss out.
Honestly if I was part of a board that said "we really need to have laptops in the classroom to educate our kids" and it was left up to me to implement this I'd probably do something like this.
1) Decide on the software that teachers are allowed to use, any program must run on all OS's (or have a similar variant that does, ie office apps), and if possible, be free.
2) Fine the stablest and easiest to use and support laptop that I can, ie the cheapest iBook. Say that's our platform and our school admins are prepared to support it..
3) Tell the parents, they'll use iBooks in the class, and we'll have some iBooks for signout during school hours for students who haven't bought one. They can use their own comps at home to do homework but at school the only thing in the class will be the listed models of mac OS + hardware. If they really want their child to use their own computer that child will need to go to the school admin and demonstrate they are sufficiently skilled to administer it, if a student is having technical issues with an unsupported laptop they will be issued a school one instead.
There's no way an average school will have the technical ability to administrate a school full of random laptops unless you want to spend a portion of each class debugging machines this is what you have to do.
FTA is sounds like this isn't about politeness as about costs/ordering tests on the weekend. My (heavily extrapolated) understanding of the situation is that doctors work any day of the week, but technicians are more 9-5 Mon-Fri. The administration apparently felt that the doctors weren't considering that technicians generally didn't work weekends (maybe they get overtime then too), thus some tests that could be ignored or left till a weekday were still being ordered on the weekend. The administration tried to stop this by forcing the doctors to write "please", presumably reminding the doctor that it was an inconvenience for the technicians and to consider if it was a test that could wait.
If my interpretation is accurate than the administrators main mistake was in how they reacted to doctors forgetting to write "please". The writing of "please" was just supposed to nag the doctors, so rather than refuse the test if there is no "please" just have the administrator nag the doctor come Monday.
Does no-one see the problem here? If this becomes accurate to predict anything of actual use, the markets themselves will start using it... which renders the predictions themselves useless.
It's like seeing into the future and acting upon what you see - by doing that you alter the future itself, making the initial prediction invalid.
Not useless, it causes the bubble to burst earlier, while it's a little smaller, and causing less disruption in the process.
To be fair I think science started the fight in the sense that religion and superstition were there first.
Ever since Copernicus science has been knocking down bits of Christianity.
Not only would biblical literalists of the 14th century have probably been worse than the DI and AIG, but they would probably contain the educated mainstream as well.
They didn't start the war, they're more like Hiroo Onoda, still fighting long after the war was lost.
I think there are two good arguments against public education.
First is market forces, private enterprise does better than government institutions in many other fields, why not education too?
The second is ideology. In theory having the government run the education system sounds like a really bad idea because of the potential for politicization. In reality I've never found this to be a problem, however Texas is starting to give me second thoughts.
The civil war was about slavery. Viewed from the perspective of 2010, it was good (abolitionist) vs. evil (slavery). Why, then, do outspoken Christians seem to always be stretching to push the confederacy as a just cause? Jesus preached 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Doesn't that golden rule clearly lay down an opposition to slavery?
It could be as simple as the fact that the south has the most outspoken Christians and the south is where the confederacy was. Probably explains why outspoken Christians are associated with gun rights too. Heck, if cowboy hats became controversial they'd probably be an outspoken Christian cause too.
I wonder if that motivation isn't at play here, try to politicize the education standards so much that people lose faith in a state run education system.
unless he continues to be right. So far, the "CO2 is the cause" crowd have continued to get it wrong, so why do so many people continue to listen to them? The initial theory of CO2 heating the planet up was based on the observations of Venus' atmosphere and temperature. Venus was described as a runaway greenhouse effect. While it's true that the atmosphere of Venus has a much higher concentration of CO2 than on Earth, it's also true that Mars has a higher concentration of CO2. Venus is much hotter than Earth, Mars is much colder. So what gives? Scientists have more recently concluded that the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect.
No Scientists did not conclude that the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect.
Anthony Watts, a climate sceptic and meteorologist, posted an entry by Steve Goddard (I don't know his qualifications) on his blog that said the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect. If you want me to take that post seriously than show me the paper in a respectable peer reviewed scientific journal that says the same thing. That way I know that at least some knowledgeable scientists have looked at the paper and checked the data and calculations.
I'm sorry but I've seen more than enough "scientific" blog posts and it will take more than that to convince me of an argument.
Science isn't inconclusive. There is statistically significant, or not. In this case, not.
Test another hypothesis or test again if data looks fishy.
Getting a conclusive answer isn't hard, the problem is figuring out what questions you can apply that answer to.
Lets look at a hypothetical study looking at car colour and accidents. Trying to decide what colour of car you should buy to avoid getting in an accident.
The researchers take a bunch of police reports, count up the numbers for each colour involved, compare that to car sales, and find that red cars are over-represented by 15%.
Did that study show that drivers of red cars are more likely to get in accidents? Not necessarily, maybe the red car drivers like their cars more, keep them in better shape, and thus those cars stay in the driving population longer. Thus red is overrepresented by 15% in the total number of cars.
Say you have another study that eliminates that possibility. So can you now say that red cars make people worse drivers? Well maybe people who like driving buy red cars, so they drive 15% more than other drivers and get in 15% more accidents.
Ok, control for that. Maybe the red makes the drivers more aggressive? Then again maybe people who are already aggressive simply buy red cars.
Or maybe it's not the colour but something in certain red paints causes drivers to act irrationally.
You can go on like this for a very long time, studies like this are powerful, but they're also tricky because if you want a useful answer you have to interpret your data and decide if there's important aspects you overlooked.
If you want to know if the red paint causes accidents seeing who buys the cars is probably a pretty important question to ask. Testing the paints for hallucinogens, well you can probably safely ignore that possible bias.
I remember lots of talk about the tech bubble well before it burst.
And I read articles in 2004 (or maybe early '05, post election) saying whichever party won the US election would have trouble when the housing bubble burst. And that the resulting recession would be unusually bad since the economy was overdue.
The trick isn't knowing that the bubble will burst, its knowing when to get off. If you get off a month too early than it doesn't matter that you missed the bubble, all your investors have already jumped ship seeking higher returns with the bubble riders and you're out of a job.
And if you're good enough at economics that you see the bubble is going to burst in a week than you sell. If a few more people see the same thing than the bubble bursts a week earlier and you didn't dodge anything but that extra weeks growth.
she has to defend the administration position on this whether she wants to or not,
Bullshit. Imagine for a moment that instead of a soulless political whore, she was a decent human being with a functioning moral sense. She could have refused to protect the guilty, and it's not likely that the empty-suit-in-chief would dare to fire her for taking a stand on a principle.
This woman is Alberto Gonzalez in drag.
You have the same judicial philosophy as Liz Cheney.
The job of lawyers isn't to judge their clients, it's to represent their interests, even if those interests clash with their own moral code.
"You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages."
I've always preferred to refer to things like the RIAA lawsuits as lawsuit lotteries. It bears a lot in common with lotteries, although millions are eligible to be selected only a handful ever are, however in the unlikely event you are one of the few the amount of money involved is extreme.
"Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels."
no... epic fail....
What do you base this on?
Right now coal is the cheapest fuel we have, I don't even think large scale nuclear is competitive with coal. Why would you expect that to change? Sure technology will make other energy sources cheaper, but it will also make coal cheaper too.
So 50 years is too late now? Last I heard it was 100 years, just keeps getting shorter and shorter.
I don't know what the actual scientists are saying on this. But ~100 years (well 2100) is when many of the long term projections are based.
However as to the actual tipping point, when we go from one meta-stable system to another, that's based on CO2 concentration. I don't know the exact numbers here but I've heard some people who suspect we're already past the tipping point. I don't think that's the consensus view but I doubt there's many scientists who believe in AGW and think we can ignore the problem for another 50 years without passing the tipping point.
Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels, but that won't happen since each year solar energy becomes more efficient and eventually Fusion will be a reliable method of Power Generation.
My biggest concern is that people are blowing this entire thing so out of proportion. I am a firm believe that all we have to do is continue progressing like we are and we will be fine.
The people who think that in 50 years that we will be consuming the same amount or more of carbon as we do now are delusional. If we had the same level of production as we do now, but 100 years ago, the amount of carbon we would release would be so much higher then it is now. Technologies become naturally more efficient and clean as time goes on. Just sit back and do nothing and natural advances is Tech will do the work for us.
Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels.
As for the evidence convincing you being "Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels", is there evidence you'll accept that doesn't consist of waiting until its already too late?
LOL, you're saying that a single sample without any other information would prove everything...
It sure wouldn't disprove a natural cycle.
Ok then, here's an open question to all the climate skeptics.
What would convince you that global warming is real?
I know there are things that would convince me it's not real.
The first would be to show me that most climatologists and scientists in general no longer believe in AGW. (note the various petitions put out aren't of sufficient quality to accomplish this.) The second is to show me why most climatologists and scientists are wrong about AGW. Note I've yet to see an explanation here that doesn't rely on the assumption that scientists are all idiots and/or in a giant conspiracy theory (propositions for which the evidence is sorely lacking).
So what would it take for you to change your mind?
I like the fact that much of your justification for doing nothing comes from the fact that we've done nothing so far, so to act now would be that much more expensive.
And 40% in 10 years would clearly be very disruptive, but what about 10%? Or at least trying to stop the increase?
And considering being wrong, what if you're wrong? What are the costs of mass famine? Large migrations from coastal regions? (even ignoring political instability the real estate is big money).
Oh, and if we are completely wrong about AGW and the climate won't warm.
you see bullshit like claiming it'll be 10c warmer in 100 years is WHY we don't believe you! I'm not sorry or going to apologise for holding climate change claims to fucking high standard of proof when your asking the world to spend TRILLIONS on solving the supposed problem.
I'm not saying that the projections are for it to be 10C warmer, I'm saying the evidence could be as blatant as a climate 10C warmer.
I want you to sit down and just play devils advocate for a minute and run through the consequences of you being wrong about global warming.
I do that every time I consider the issue.
I don't claim that the science is infallible, but at the end of the day it's a simple calculation.
What's the cost of doing something vs the cost of doing nothing.
And what's the cost of climate change if it's real and we do nothing.
It's not hard to justify an expenditure of trillions when you consider the odds.
Unfortunately I don't think this will make a difference.
Is anyone here willing to stand up and say they were a denialist but became convinced of the validity of AGW when the CRU was vindicated? What about anyone who's still a denialist, but decided that the emails weren't the smoking gun after all?
I fear that no evidence can ever be enough. Imagine we had a time machine and could look 100 years in the future and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer. I suspect a substantial portion of denialists would simply claim it was part of a natural cycle, or a scientific conspiracy was using a doomsday device to warm the planet, anything but the greenhouse effect.
I don't mind the concept of usage based billing, why should someone using 800 GB a month pay the same as someone using 800 MB a month?
Because it costs the same amount of money for the truck to run a piece of fiber from the central office to each of their houses and the same amount of money for the truck to come back and fix it when a tree falls on the lines, which is by far the bulk of the cost of residential internet service. Unlike electricity for which a very substantial part of the cost is the fuel, which the power company can use less of when more people turn off the lights.
Whether the cost is from a big initial investment, or with a constant production cost, it still has to be paid for.
I don't mind the concept of usage based billing, why should someone using 800 GB a month pay the same as someone using 800 MB a month? Should someone with 800 lights on have the same power bill as someone with only a single light?
I really don't think the CRTC needs to be involved here (other than making sure the smaller ISPs don't get locked out), in Edmonton I have Telus and Shaw both competing to give me reasonable rates. Of course I assume government funding/monopolies was involved in giving them the lines so the government does have cause to stay involved.
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This isn't a simple math equation, the data is messy, there are inconsistencies, multiple versions, workarounds for known issues, and the occasional mistake.
If someone has an axe to grind it's easy to do the equivalent of quote-mining, and even if what they say can be shown to be completely and conclusively wrong, people will still buy it. The unfortunate truth is that even if you are completely right you're probably still better hiding your data from critics. The critics don't have to be right, they just have to throw up some FUD and claim the data backs them up.
I agree they should have handed over the data, but I also believe that there's a lot of ways for critics to hurt you even if the data is good.
It means that Jones was pissed off after years of dealing with people whom he felt had no interest in the data, but were only looking for anything that looked like an error so they could blow it as far out of proportion as possible.
Yes he regrets typing that message, and yes, they should be more open supplying the data. But if someone was asking me the equivalent of "hand me that shovel so I can start hitting you with it" I might be hesitant too.
Here ya go
Responsible for some variation but doesn't correlate with the long term rise in temperatures.
Since everyone here is trashing the decision I figured I try to be the devils advocate.
Assuming the laptops do have a legitimate educational use I can see two motivations for a single platform.
1) Specific applications:
They may intend to use specific applications that are only available on the mac, if this is the case I don't really agree since they should be able to find an alternative that runs on multiple platforms.
2) Support:
I suspect this is the real reason. Let every student bring their own laptop, most are various versions of windows, a bunch more apples, maybe one or two linux, and very rarely something else entirely. Now students have to install app X for some class. Even if it's cross platform there's 5 different versions of windows, some unsupported and horribly out of date. Some can't connect to the wireless, others crash constantly, maybe having bad hardware, viruses everywhere, and the poor school admin has to worry about keeping all of these working of students are going to miss out.
Honestly if I was part of a board that said "we really need to have laptops in the classroom to educate our kids" and it was left up to me to implement this I'd probably do something like this.
1) Decide on the software that teachers are allowed to use, any program must run on all OS's (or have a similar variant that does, ie office apps), and if possible, be free.
2) Fine the stablest and easiest to use and support laptop that I can, ie the cheapest iBook. Say that's our platform and our school admins are prepared to support it..
3) Tell the parents, they'll use iBooks in the class, and we'll have some iBooks for signout during school hours for students who haven't bought one. They can use their own comps at home to do homework but at school the only thing in the class will be the listed models of mac OS + hardware. If they really want their child to use their own computer that child will need to go to the school admin and demonstrate they are sufficiently skilled to administer it, if a student is having technical issues with an unsupported laptop they will be issued a school one instead.
There's no way an average school will have the technical ability to administrate a school full of random laptops unless you want to spend a portion of each class debugging machines this is what you have to do.
FTA is sounds like this isn't about politeness as about costs/ordering tests on the weekend. My (heavily extrapolated) understanding of the situation is that doctors work any day of the week, but technicians are more 9-5 Mon-Fri. The administration apparently felt that the doctors weren't considering that technicians generally didn't work weekends (maybe they get overtime then too), thus some tests that could be ignored or left till a weekday were still being ordered on the weekend. The administration tried to stop this by forcing the doctors to write "please", presumably reminding the doctor that it was an inconvenience for the technicians and to consider if it was a test that could wait.
If my interpretation is accurate than the administrators main mistake was in how they reacted to doctors forgetting to write "please". The writing of "please" was just supposed to nag the doctors, so rather than refuse the test if there is no "please" just have the administrator nag the doctor come Monday.
Does no-one see the problem here? If this becomes accurate to predict anything of actual use, the markets themselves will start using it... which renders the predictions themselves useless.
It's like seeing into the future and acting upon what you see - by doing that you alter the future itself, making the initial prediction invalid.
Not useless, it causes the bubble to burst earlier, while it's a little smaller, and causing less disruption in the process.
To be fair I think science started the fight in the sense that religion and superstition were there first.
Ever since Copernicus science has been knocking down bits of Christianity.
Not only would biblical literalists of the 14th century have probably been worse than the DI and AIG, but they would probably contain the educated mainstream as well.
They didn't start the war, they're more like Hiroo Onoda, still fighting long after the war was lost.
I think there are two good arguments against public education.
First is market forces, private enterprise does better than government institutions in many other fields, why not education too?
The second is ideology. In theory having the government run the education system sounds like a really bad idea because of the potential for politicization. In reality I've never found this to be a problem, however Texas is starting to give me second thoughts.
The civil war was about slavery. Viewed from the perspective of 2010, it was good (abolitionist) vs. evil (slavery). Why, then, do outspoken Christians seem to always be stretching to push the confederacy as a just cause? Jesus preached 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Doesn't that golden rule clearly lay down an opposition to slavery?
It could be as simple as the fact that the south has the most outspoken Christians and the south is where the confederacy was. Probably explains why outspoken Christians are associated with gun rights too. Heck, if cowboy hats became controversial they'd probably be an outspoken Christian cause too.
There's a lot of conservatives who hate the idea of state education and want all the schools to be private with no government standards. Cynthia Dunbar, one of the bigger whackjobs on the board, isn't a fan of public schools according to her book where She calls public education a "subtly deceptive tool of perversion." The establishment of public schools is unconstitutional and even "tyrannical".
I wonder if that motivation isn't at play here, try to politicize the education standards so much that people lose faith in a state run education system.
unless he continues to be right. So far, the "CO2 is the cause" crowd have continued to get it wrong, so why do so many people continue to listen to them? The initial theory of CO2 heating the planet up was based on the observations of Venus' atmosphere and temperature. Venus was described as a runaway greenhouse effect. While it's true that the atmosphere of Venus has a much higher concentration of CO2 than on Earth, it's also true that Mars has a higher concentration of CO2. Venus is much hotter than Earth, Mars is much colder. So what gives? Scientists have more recently concluded that the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect.
No Scientists did not conclude that the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect.
Anthony Watts, a climate sceptic and meteorologist, posted an entry by Steve Goddard (I don't know his qualifications) on his blog that said the high temperatures on Venus aren't cause by a greenhouse effect. If you want me to take that post seriously than show me the paper in a respectable peer reviewed scientific journal that says the same thing. That way I know that at least some knowledgeable scientists have looked at the paper and checked the data and calculations.
I'm sorry but I've seen more than enough "scientific" blog posts and it will take more than that to convince me of an argument.
Science isn't inconclusive. There is statistically significant, or not. In this case, not.
Test another hypothesis or test again if data looks fishy.
Getting a conclusive answer isn't hard, the problem is figuring out what questions you can apply that answer to.
Lets look at a hypothetical study looking at car colour and accidents. Trying to decide what colour of car you should buy to avoid getting in an accident.
The researchers take a bunch of police reports, count up the numbers for each colour involved, compare that to car sales, and find that red cars are over-represented by 15%.
Did that study show that drivers of red cars are more likely to get in accidents? Not necessarily, maybe the red car drivers like their cars more, keep them in better shape, and thus those cars stay in the driving population longer. Thus red is overrepresented by 15% in the total number of cars.
Say you have another study that eliminates that possibility. So can you now say that red cars make people worse drivers? Well maybe people who like driving buy red cars, so they drive 15% more than other drivers and get in 15% more accidents.
Ok, control for that. Maybe the red makes the drivers more aggressive? Then again maybe people who are already aggressive simply buy red cars.
Or maybe it's not the colour but something in certain red paints causes drivers to act irrationally.
You can go on like this for a very long time, studies like this are powerful, but they're also tricky because if you want a useful answer you have to interpret your data and decide if there's important aspects you overlooked.
If you want to know if the red paint causes accidents seeing who buys the cars is probably a pretty important question to ask. Testing the paints for hallucinogens, well you can probably safely ignore that possible bias.
I remember lots of talk about the tech bubble well before it burst.
And I read articles in 2004 (or maybe early '05, post election) saying whichever party won the US election would have trouble when the housing bubble burst. And that the resulting recession would be unusually bad since the economy was overdue.
The trick isn't knowing that the bubble will burst, its knowing when to get off. If you get off a month too early than it doesn't matter that you missed the bubble, all your investors have already jumped ship seeking higher returns with the bubble riders and you're out of a job.
And if you're good enough at economics that you see the bubble is going to burst in a week than you sell. If a few more people see the same thing than the bubble bursts a week earlier and you didn't dodge anything but that extra weeks growth.
she has to defend the administration position on this whether she wants to or not,
Bullshit. Imagine for a moment that instead of a soulless political whore, she was a decent human being with a functioning moral sense. She could have refused to protect the guilty, and it's not likely that the empty-suit-in-chief would dare to fire her for taking a stand on a principle.
This woman is Alberto Gonzalez in drag.
You have the same judicial philosophy as Liz Cheney.
The job of lawyers isn't to judge their clients, it's to represent their interests, even if those interests clash with their own moral code.
"You don't want to play Russian roulette with very high statutory damages."
I've always preferred to refer to things like the RIAA lawsuits as lawsuit lotteries. It bears a lot in common with lotteries, although millions are eligible to be selected only a handful ever are, however in the unlikely event you are one of the few the amount of money involved is extreme.
"Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels."
no... epic fail....
What do you base this on?
Right now coal is the cheapest fuel we have, I don't even think large scale nuclear is competitive with coal. Why would you expect that to change? Sure technology will make other energy sources cheaper, but it will also make coal cheaper too.
So 50 years is too late now? Last I heard it was 100 years, just keeps getting shorter and shorter.
I don't know what the actual scientists are saying on this. But ~100 years (well 2100) is when many of the long term projections are based.
However as to the actual tipping point, when we go from one meta-stable system to another, that's based on CO2 concentration. I don't know the exact numbers here but I've heard some people who suspect we're already past the tipping point. I don't think that's the consensus view but I doubt there's many scientists who believe in AGW and think we can ignore the problem for another 50 years without passing the tipping point.
Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels, but that won't happen since each year solar energy becomes more efficient and eventually Fusion will be a reliable method of Power Generation.
My biggest concern is that people are blowing this entire thing so out of proportion. I am a firm believe that all we have to do is continue progressing like we are and we will be fine.
The people who think that in 50 years that we will be consuming the same amount or more of carbon as we do now are delusional. If we had the same level of production as we do now, but 100 years ago, the amount of carbon we would release would be so much higher then it is now. Technologies become naturally more efficient and clean as time goes on. Just sit back and do nothing and natural advances is Tech will do the work for us.
Honestly without the impetus of global warming I suspect we'll use fossil fuels until they're all used up, and only then look for alternative fuels.
As for the evidence convincing you being "Another 50 years of corresponding increases to both Earth's average temperature and CO2 levels", is there evidence you'll accept that doesn't consist of waiting until its already too late?
LOL, you're saying that a single sample without any other information would prove everything...
It sure wouldn't disprove a natural cycle.
Ok then, here's an open question to all the climate skeptics.
What would convince you that global warming is real?
I know there are things that would convince me it's not real.
The first would be to show me that most climatologists and scientists in general no longer believe in AGW. (note the various petitions put out aren't of sufficient quality to accomplish this.)
The second is to show me why most climatologists and scientists are wrong about AGW. Note I've yet to see an explanation here that doesn't rely on the assumption that scientists are all idiots and/or in a giant conspiracy theory (propositions for which the evidence is sorely lacking).
So what would it take for you to change your mind?
I like the fact that much of your justification for doing nothing comes from the fact that we've done nothing so far, so to act now would be that much more expensive.
And 40% in 10 years would clearly be very disruptive, but what about 10%? Or at least trying to stop the increase?
And considering being wrong, what if you're wrong? What are the costs of mass famine? Large migrations from coastal regions? (even ignoring political instability the real estate is big money).
Oh, and if we are completely wrong about AGW and the climate won't warm.
What do you plan to do about ocean acidification?
"and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer"
you see bullshit like claiming it'll be 10c warmer in 100 years is WHY we don't believe you! I'm not sorry or going to apologise for holding climate change claims to fucking high standard of proof when your asking the world to spend TRILLIONS on solving the supposed problem.
I'm not saying that the projections are for it to be 10C warmer, I'm saying the evidence could be as blatant as a climate 10C warmer.
I want you to sit down and just play devils advocate for a minute and run through the consequences of you being wrong about global warming.
I do that every time I consider the issue.
I don't claim that the science is infallible, but at the end of the day it's a simple calculation.
What's the cost of doing something vs the cost of doing nothing.
And what's the cost of climate change if it's real and we do nothing.
It's not hard to justify an expenditure of trillions when you consider the odds.
Unfortunately I don't think this will make a difference.
Is anyone here willing to stand up and say they were a denialist but became convinced of the validity of AGW when the CRU was vindicated? What about anyone who's still a denialist, but decided that the emails weren't the smoking gun after all?
I fear that no evidence can ever be enough. Imagine we had a time machine and could look 100 years in the future and saw the climate was 10 degrees warmer. I suspect a substantial portion of denialists would simply claim it was part of a natural cycle, or a scientific conspiracy was using a doomsday device to warm the planet, anything but the greenhouse effect.
I don't mind the concept of usage based billing, why should someone using 800 GB a month pay the same as someone using 800 MB a month?
Because it costs the same amount of money for the truck to run a piece of fiber from the central office to each of their houses and the same amount of money for the truck to come back and fix it when a tree falls on the lines, which is by far the bulk of the cost of residential internet service. Unlike electricity for which a very substantial part of the cost is the fuel, which the power company can use less of when more people turn off the lights.
Whether the cost is from a big initial investment, or with a constant production cost, it still has to be paid for.
Well I can tell you I don't use 60 GB a month.
I don't mind the concept of usage based billing, why should someone using 800 GB a month pay the same as someone using 800 MB a month? Should someone with 800 lights on have the same power bill as someone with only a single light?
I really don't think the CRTC needs to be involved here (other than making sure the smaller ISPs don't get locked out), in Edmonton I have Telus and Shaw both competing to give me reasonable rates. Of course I assume government funding/monopolies was involved in giving them the lines so the government does have cause to stay involved.
You might wanna look at my nick...
Lovely rant though.