I disagree. I read the entire thread and it did not damage KDE's image, nor did it KOffice's. It does seem like you WANT it to damage the project's credibility. In other words, it does seem as if you have a hidden agenda against those projects, because you just won't let the issue die.
In other words, it won't damage the projects if you just stop making such a big deal out of it, i.e. it's up to you to damage the project's reputation or not...
As far as OSNews is concern, let me repeat what I already wrote a second time, since it seemed you missed it the first time: after the flamewar here, you went to complain about it in a KDE-related thread on OSNews. I find that rather pathetic, and so did others in that thread.
No, these comments don't make the KDE community look bad, because they are the statement of a single developer who doesn't speak in their name. And the reason he insulted you is that you basically acted like a jerk. Get over it.
And me mentioning OSNews has to do with the fact that you went over there to complain about it, which is quite childish.
Huh, I'm a long time KDE developer and frankly I don't mind if developers claim they can develop stuff before it's done. Announcing a program before it's done is fine, MS does it all the time, and so does just about any other software developer. Just look at how it is in the video game industry! Seriously, this whole issue is overblown...and the fact that you went and whined about it on OSNews doesn't help your credibility in the matter.
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Unless we can dramatically bring down the cost of living in the U.S., then workers here will never be able to compete! They can't live in the streets and willingly starve to death just to keep their jobs...what you guys are prescribing is a recipe for disaster.
Actually we were talking about the outsourced jobs that don't require education (with many of them going to countries much poorer than India).
Even then, it's unlikely that people living in these large slums hold steady jobs in manufacturing. In any case, we do agree that no one should have to live in such poverty.
That was a typo, my bad.
No problem.
The hotel room at $1.50 a night would end up costing $45 a month, which would be well out of range for someone making $2 a day.
Certainly. I was simply making a comparison. I wouldn't be able to live in a hotel year round here either!;-)
No, that is never the intent, but is usually the result.
You're unfortunately right. I'm not advocating the status quo, merely stating that protectionism has its uses to stabilize such changes as we are seeing today. Let me put it this way: what we had before was bad for developing countries, what we have now is bad for the first world. What we need to find is something that is good for everyone - though we may have to accept the fact that it won't maximize profits.
You are talking about an individual company outsourcing some of their positions. I am talking about having a free market economy where people in developing nations are allowed to compete with those who were lucky enough to be born in nations where people whine and moan if the unemployment rate gets above 5%.
On principle I agree with you, however I don't agree with the reckless way it is done today. Particularly, I don't think it should be left to the market, because I don't believe the market is self-regulatory (and therefore letting the market take care of it could have catastrophic results). In a world where everyone enjoyed the same standard of living and roughly the same salary, then your hypothesis could work. However, in reality it is impossible for a westerner to compete with someone from a developed country, because the cost of living are so dramatically different. Could you work for 2$ a day? Okay, let's say that by some miracle you are 5 times as efficient...could you afford to live with only 10$ a day? That's a whopping 300$ per month. My rent alone is exactly that, and I'm very lucky to pay so low for an apartment. It's unfair competition when it only costs the other guy 25$ a month.
The problem is that people see this as introducing a level playing field, but in fact it's anything but even. We need to find ways to jumpstart developing nations' economies without undermining our own. Scrapping the third world debt and letting these countries protect their native industries and natural resources is a good start. Again, in order to achieve that it's possible that stockholders will make a little less money, but to be frank I could care less about them. When everyone has a decent job at a decent salary, then we'll see...
Have you seen the slums in India? Or other countries that are "stealing our jobs" (remember the origional post was on manufactoring jobs, not IT jobs that mostly go to India)?
Actually, yes I have. People live in terrible conditions. However, not all people in India live in slums, and those who are likely to get outsourced jobs probably don't (because they need a minimum of education).
Of course, increase in anyone's salary in India will increase tax revenues for the state, so the case can be made that those living in the slums will benefit as well, but knowing Indian bureaucracy I wouldn't count on that too much...
Its not just like America except you can rent an apartmentfor $10 a day and a new widescreen TV set costs $20. They really are areas of the world which are poor.
Well, electronics are expensive to be sure, but in India every middle-class family has a TV and VCR (well, I haven't been there in a few years, maybe they have DVDs now). But you can get apartments for much less than 10$ a day. You can get a nice hotel room for about 60 rupees a day, which is a bit less than 1.50$USD. I gather you could get a comfortable-enough apartment for less than 25$ a month.
So you are saying we need protectionism to make sure poor nations don't improve? I know many (myself included) who would disagree with that.
Read the other response I wrote: economics is not a zero-sum game. We don't need to lower the standard of living here to improve it over there. Protectionism doesn't mean keeping developing nations poor. We need a certain degree of protectionism to protect the standard of living here, however there are plenty of things we can do to help the developing world - the first (and most obvious) is scrapping their debt and allowing them to protect their own vulnerable markets. One of the reasons the third world is what it is today is because their natural resources were plundered and pillaged by developed nations, and their markets were forced open to goods produced in developed nations.
You have to understand that the primary goal of outsourcing is not to raise the standard of living in impoverished nations - in fact, if salaries climb too much, the outsourcing companies will simply pack up and leave. No, outsourcing has only one goal: make a very small minority of people (large stockholders, who nearly all live in developed countries) richer by decreasing production costs. It is a complete subversion (I should say perversion) of the U.S. economy. I think it shows a very high level of free-market indoctrination that more people aren't protesting this in this forum...
No, because the increased profits made by stockholders remain in the first world, and even though salaries in developing countries will increase due to this, it will take a lot of time before they reach first-world levels (if ever). The problem is that since this is completely unregulated, it happens in a completely chaotic way. Unemployment will rise in the U.S., whose economy is already shaky, which could result in a serious economic crisis.
Economics is not a zero-sum game. It is possible to improve economic conditions in developing countries without decreasing standards of living here. However, that could mean stockholders (i.e. people who make money off of capital investments) would not make as much money in the short-term. It's up to us to choose: do we want people here to have jobs, or do we want to maximize ROI for those who live off of their portfolios?
And yet they are still better off than many of the people in third world countries who may get a chance to make a half-way decent living as a result of jobs coming by via 'outsourcing'.
Not necessarily. They may be better off on an absolute case (i.e. net income, assets), however to make a standard of living comparison you also have to factor in cost of living. Living in India on 2$ a day is relatively easy. Living on 2$ a day in the U.S. is almost impossible.
You also have to consider being used to a certain lifestyle. Basically, if your basic income decreases, it's going to create problems, no matter if you still make more money than others, because you are used to a certain level of comfort. That doesn't meant that you won't be able to adapt, however it will be an unpleasant experience.
I think what this highlights is the failure of the laissez-faire theory in economics. Basically, until countries reach similar standards of living, free movement of labor between these countries will disrupt the richer economy. Protectionism is a necessary tool of economic planning, and forsaking it in the name of some free-market leap of faith is foolish. The irony is that a lot of those who are now losing their jobs in the IT industry were die-hard believers in this neo-capitalist dogma...
I guess Marx was right: capitalism will crumble under the weight of its own contradictions after all...:-)
Now he does that to try to emphasize the rapidity of change, but it also means that our current rise may NOT be due to humans after all as there were no humans on the planet when those shifts were recorded.
Then again, it may. Even if one or two shifts similar to the current one (at least you recognize there is one) occured in the past, that does not prove in any way that what's going on now is the same as what happened during those times. A lot more "grant money" would be necessary before a definite statement could be made in that sense. So it seems to me that you are jumping to conclusions, here - conclusions that support your agenda, obviously.
And back to my analogy, I didn't say someone who stopped (or didn't) smoke wouldn't get lung cancer, I simply said cancer.
No, that is the opposite of what you said. You said that "telling folks that by cutting down their green house gas emissions, they are going to prevent or even ameliorate global warming is like telling someone that by not smoking they will not get cancer" - in other words, that you can still get cancer even if you smoke (re-read the sentence above, I think you used too many negatives and lost count). What I replied is that, while you may still get other types of cancer, if you don't smoke you will have much less chances of getting lung cancer, therefore lowering the overall risk of getting a cancer.
Just like our changing the amount of green house gases may prevent a kind of global climate shift but by definition there are other mechanisms that don't involve humans that will still cause a global climate shift.
We are in an interglacial period. It's not supposed to get warmer than it is right now, and there is no proof that the currently measured warming is natural. Meanwhile, there have been millions of tons of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere from fossilized sources. Climate models predict an increase in temperature. An increased in temperature is measured and confirmed through satellite data. I think it's time to put two and two together, now.
The end result is the same, massive changes in where humanity can live comfortably
How do you know we can live comfortably in those massive changes? What about people who live near the coast? I'm sorry, but your blind faith that "everything's going to be all right" just doesn't cut it.
Of course not there isn't any grant money in it.
"Grant money" is infinitesimal compared to oil industry profits. It doesn't even register on the same scale. The Energy Industry has a lot more power and influence than do climate scientists. Enough with the goddam "scientists made up Global Warming to get more grant money" lie. Nobody believes it but a handful of conservative "enviroskeptic" americans. We're through listening to your oil-friendly pseudo-science.
Well, don't. See if I care! As for Lomborg's defense, the statistician gets many facts wrong. Here's more rebuttal of his provocative, but ultimately shaky theories.
You make the assumption that, because twice in a period of a 300 million years there have been rapid outbursts of greehouse gases, that this is one of them. There's a chance it might be, but there's also a chance it isn't. Are you ready to take that chance?
BTW your analogy to the smoker is faulty. By not smoking, a person will greatly reduce their chance of getting lung cancer - or will you try to deny this as well by claiming anectodical evidence of smokers who lived to be 100 years old?
On the contrary, a number of the papers that study things like ice cores in the antartic are worried because climate shifts were, in a geological sense, very rapid. Don't you even read this stuff?
"Very rapid" in a geological sense is still slower than the change we are seeing today. In any case, I'd like if you could provide some links to some of those papers you speak of. And since there's a few nit-pickers on the thread, I'll add that it's spelled the "Antarctic".
My two points are that the "global warming alarmists" are wasting innocent people's hard earned money by trying to get them to buy into the fact that they will figure out a way to control the weather
Straw man argument. Strike one!
Next thing you know there will be the "global magnetic crisis". The north and south poles are wandering, and they may even switch to opposite ends of the planet! This change has been accelerating over the last 100 years, it MUST be due to something people are doing.
Don't be silly. We know that human activity isn't responsible for magnetical pole switching, and that the switching is unlikely to affect us very much (though it might affect electrical devices somewhat).
Gee, two straw man arguments in a row...can we hope for strike three?
Can we stop sacrificing innocent people in the quest to appease the weather gods? It didn't work for the Mayans and it won't work today.
And you're out! Wow, do you really believe you'll convince anyone to follow your minority viewpoint with such logical fallacies?
a little over 500 years ago EVERYONE thought the world was flat, didn't make it true.
Not everyone did. Just most europeans (thanks, Christianity!).
Hasn't the planet been for millions of years and gone through many ice ages? Isn't it natural to assume that at some point it got warmer in between those ice ages?
If we were in an ice age I wouldn't be too worried about global warming. The problem is that the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. We are in an interglacial phase, it's not supposed to get warmer like this.
We have what 100 or so years of weather data?
Actually we can go back a lot further than 100 years by checking the ice caps at various depths.
The Earth was here long before us and will be here long after us.
Yeah, the idea is to make sure we're here for the longest time possible.
There isn't anything even close for global warming being caused by human activity. If someone showed me any/some evidence that I found convincing, I might change my mind.
Well, the first step would be to ask what kind of evidence you'll find convincing. One thing that we do know, is that there there is an observable warming at ground level, which has now been corroborated by the same satellite evidence that enviroskeptic trumpeted in the spring, saying it proved their position was right. We do not know for sure that human warming is responsible, however it hasn't been disproven either. The basic fact that we don't know for sure is argument enough to devote a lot more money into climate research. If it turns out that humans don't really have much of an impact on climate, fine. We'll learn that the unprecedented warming we're seeing today is a freak occurence of mother nature, and we'll happily go on burning fossil fuels, releasing all these new greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (yes, new - all those hydrocarbons have been imprisoned in the earth, out of for atmospheric circulation, for millions of years).
Telling me that someone else found the evidence convincing just doesn't cut it.
I agree. Without seeing convincing evidence that human activity is not responsible for the measureable warming, I'm not ready to take the risk releasing increasing quantities of greenhouse gases in the air. And don't try to claim that "you can't prove a negative". I'm sorry, but the stakes are too high, the burden of proof here is on the enviroskeptics.
Apparently a lot of other/. readers feel the same way.
Good for them - though they still have to prove to me that human activity isn't involving in the current global warming. Anyway, looking at the messages in the thread, as well as the overall moderation, I'd say that there are ate least as many Slashdotters who don't agree with the enviroskeptic. But since you claim to be a scientist you should pursue the discussion with Mr_Matt instead - he's the atmospheric scientist here, after all.
But, I might say, "lets plant more trees". Or "lets dump Iron Sulfate out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean" (which starts a chain reaction that causes very large amounts of CO2 to be consumed and sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it's not in the atmosphere anymore and won't be for a very long time). And, I might say "lets worry about methane in the atmosphere and do something about it. (The greenhouse effect due to methane is much greater than due to CO2)"
I agree with you about methane - the huge cattle farms release a lot of this in the air, though I suspect that CO2 still has bigger impact due to volume. As far as planting trees is concerned, this would certainly help, however the tree planting techniques we have today are woefull inadequate. While tree harvesting has become extremely efficient through the use of heavy machinery, tree planting is still done by hand (due to the delicate nature of the operation, it's trickier and costlier to mechanize). It's hard, grueling work, and it doesn't pay that much. We'd be hard pressed to embark on the massive planting effort you suggest. The iron sulfate idea is intriguing, though I'd be curious to hear about the effect on marine life.
Then, after seeing if these things have effect I might even say we have to cut down on emissions. But, when I look at cost/benefit, the last item is just not at the top of the list.
You know something that really ticks me off? It's that everyone but the US has agreed on Kyoto. Only in the richest country of the world do we find so so many people bitching about how much it would cost. Everywhere else in the world, China, Russia, Europe, Canada, the rich and the poor, everyone has agreed. The problem is that it's not only America's atmosphere - it everyone's. So everyone has their word to say.
The U.S. should be targeted with economic sanctions by
What's your point, except for the obvious (and annoying) nit-picking?
Yes, there are some people who don't believe that greenhouse gas emissions do not have an impact on global climate changes. There's quite a few that hang out on Slashdot, it seems. But the point is that there is many, many more that believe that, in fact, they do. Until there is convincing evidence either way, basic prudence tells me that I should act as if the much bigger group is right. If they turn out to be wrong, well then we'll just have wasted a bit of money - no more than we would have on a couple of wars, and somehow we manage to recover from those. But if they turn out to be right, and we didn't follow their advice...well, you get the idea.
The military spends billions on "contingency plans", preparing for attacks that may never come. I don't see any of you complaining about this...
1) There is clear evidence of global climate changes when humans were not present.
2) There is clear evidence of global climate changes when humans are present.
What you fail to mention is that, barring catastrophic events such as asteroid or comet strikes, the evidence of Global Climate Change when humans were not present shows a slow, gradual change. The changes we are now witnessing, however, are happening at a dramatically faster pace. As it happens, this small detail makes the rest of your otherwise silly argument irrelevant. Sorry.
If you think Exxon would give him money directly, then you have no clue about how things work in the Corporate PR world.
Note that I did not specifically say that HE got money from the Energy Lobby. I learned that trick from Dick Cheney. I do know that some people think there are lots of errors in his theories.
At one point every scientist believed that the world was flat.
I don't think you'll find a time where every scientist agreed that the world was flat. For one, if they did not follow the empirical method they can hardly be said to be scientists. Meanwhile in other cultures than Medieval Europe the Earth was often considered to be round, something that is easily verifiable if you travel by sea.
The reality is that the church was the strongest proponent of the flat Earth/Earth-centric models, and it was never exactly a hotbed of scientific thought.
First of all, if the north polar ice all melts the seas won't rise an inch since that ice is floating and thereby displacing the water already.
May I remind you that the Earth has two poles, but that only one is floating?
What's the problem with Global Warming? I guess you don't live near the equator...I'd respond to you more fully, but as you can see I'm already busy smacking some sense into another enviroskeptic. There's only so much bad faith I can handle at a time.
I suggest you read Mr_Matt's posts instead. Maybe you'll learn a bit more about the many problems that follow in the wake of Global Climate Change.
That's why my original post was written "Any time you see every scientist agree on a very controversial topic, be very suspicious." The issues you mentioned are not controversial.
They were at some point - and like Global Climate Change, they were met with suspicion. In any case, whether or not a subject is controversial is irrelevant to the scientific process - what matters is whether it's true or not. Though when "every scientist agree" upon a topic it can hardly be called controversial, now, can it?
Convenient quoting on your part. Usually indicative of an agenda.
Nah, I was baiting ya. And you took it hook, line and sinker.
If all scientists truly agreed that human activity is having an effect on global climate (lower case is fine) then I don't think you'd have a lot of people doubting them (not just beginning, we've doubted them for a long time!). The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.
I'm sorry, but you just claimed the contrary to say that we should be suspicious of self-interest on the scientists' part. Contradicting yourself so quickly?
The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.
True. Only the vast majority.
The only thing this article proves is that the collection of articles they selected from the subset of scientific literature that they deemed worthy of reviewing supports their conclusion.
You're welcome to find an equally representative subset supporting the opposite thesis. Oh, right.
Oh really? Who is going to fund research proving that global warming is not real. Industry, that's about it. So they'll be quickly labeled an industry stooge by their colleagues (just as you did in your message) and their standing in the community will go down. Not because they're wrong but because they're going against the grain.
That's one way of putting it. Another way is that it's easy to make a lot of money with a science degree if you provide for hokey science and claim you're going "against the grain." You know, like those scientists hired by the tobacco industry to write papers on how smoking didn't cause lung cancer. That used to be controversial, you know. Now it isn't.
And they spend more time engaging in gloom and doom and explaining why the satellite record doesn't confirm their predictions than actually getting real science done.
Satellite record...I guess you're referring to the controversy earlier this year about how some satellite data tended to disprove Global Warming Models? Yeah, I remember that. You know what? The scientist who authored the original report has come out with new interpretation of the satellite data that, in fact, corroborates the observed warming on the ground.
When I said "In exchange they'll get huge grants from industries whose profits might be diminished by scientific enquiry," you replied:
Or by "junk science." Take your pick of terms.
More bull. Junk science won't damage an industry, because all the industry has to do is prove that it's junk science. That's the thing with science, see? Because of the empiric model, junk science is pretty easy to disprove. Which is why scietific papers are usually published in peer-revied journals, so that other people can verify them.
Sorry, that's extremism talking. If there is a 10% chance of it being true and it's going to cost a trillion dollars worldwide to fix the problem then we had better be avoiding at least $10 trillion worth of damage.
Some damage to the environment (like lost biodiversity) is irreversible, how much is that worth? How much is worth most of Florida? How much are polar bears worth? How much is stopping desertification worth?
You're the extremist if this is really the only way you see this. You advocate extreme ROI. Fortunately, you represent a small minority (like all extremists), so there
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Are we going to start killing all the plants that produce CO2?
Plants don't produce CO2. They absorb CO2 and release O2.
How can you possibly think you'll be taken seriously in a debate on World Climate if you don't even know this simple science fact?
I disagree. I read the entire thread and it did not damage KDE's image, nor did it KOffice's. It does seem like you WANT it to damage the project's credibility. In other words, it does seem as if you have a hidden agenda against those projects, because you just won't let the issue die.
In other words, it won't damage the projects if you just stop making such a big deal out of it, i.e. it's up to you to damage the project's reputation or not...
As far as OSNews is concern, let me repeat what I already wrote a second time, since it seemed you missed it the first time: after the flamewar here, you went to complain about it in a KDE-related thread on OSNews. I find that rather pathetic, and so did others in that thread.
No, these comments don't make the KDE community look bad, because they are the statement of a single developer who doesn't speak in their name. And the reason he insulted you is that you basically acted like a jerk. Get over it.
And me mentioning OSNews has to do with the fact that you went over there to complain about it, which is quite childish.
Ha! User! I'm a KDE user, not developer!! Sorry, I should have spotted that right away.
Just to make sure: I'm not a KDE developer. The statement in the previous post is a slip-up!
Huh, I'm a long time KDE developer and frankly I don't mind if developers claim they can develop stuff before it's done. Announcing a program before it's done is fine, MS does it all the time, and so does just about any other software developer. Just look at how it is in the video game industry! Seriously, this whole issue is overblown...and the fact that you went and whined about it on OSNews doesn't help your credibility in the matter.
As for this whole science thing: is the earth flat?
The greatest scientists used to think that as well.
Uh, no they didn't. By the time the scientific method was developed, and the term "scientist" coined, the Earth was already known to be round.
Maybe you meant "scholars"...
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Unless we can dramatically bring down the cost of living in the U.S., then workers here will never be able to compete! They can't live in the streets and willingly starve to death just to keep their jobs...what you guys are prescribing is a recipe for disaster.
Actually we were talking about the outsourced jobs that don't require education (with many of them going to countries much poorer than India).
;-)
Even then, it's unlikely that people living in these large slums hold steady jobs in manufacturing. In any case, we do agree that no one should have to live in such poverty.
That was a typo, my bad.
No problem.
The hotel room at $1.50 a night would end up costing $45 a month, which would be well out of range for someone making $2 a day.
Certainly. I was simply making a comparison. I wouldn't be able to live in a hotel year round here either!
No, that is never the intent, but is usually the result.
You're unfortunately right. I'm not advocating the status quo, merely stating that protectionism has its uses to stabilize such changes as we are seeing today. Let me put it this way: what we had before was bad for developing countries, what we have now is bad for the first world. What we need to find is something that is good for everyone - though we may have to accept the fact that it won't maximize profits.
You are talking about an individual company outsourcing some of their positions. I am talking about having a free market economy where people in developing nations are allowed to compete with those who were lucky enough to be born in nations where people whine and moan if the unemployment rate gets above 5%.
On principle I agree with you, however I don't agree with the reckless way it is done today. Particularly, I don't think it should be left to the market, because I don't believe the market is self-regulatory (and therefore letting the market take care of it could have catastrophic results). In a world where everyone enjoyed the same standard of living and roughly the same salary, then your hypothesis could work. However, in reality it is impossible for a westerner to compete with someone from a developed country, because the cost of living are so dramatically different. Could you work for 2$ a day? Okay, let's say that by some miracle you are 5 times as efficient...could you afford to live with only 10$ a day? That's a whopping 300$ per month. My rent alone is exactly that, and I'm very lucky to pay so low for an apartment. It's unfair competition when it only costs the other guy 25$ a month.
The problem is that people see this as introducing a level playing field, but in fact it's anything but even. We need to find ways to jumpstart developing nations' economies without undermining our own. Scrapping the third world debt and letting these countries protect their native industries and natural resources is a good start. Again, in order to achieve that it's possible that stockholders will make a little less money, but to be frank I could care less about them. When everyone has a decent job at a decent salary, then we'll see...
Have you seen the slums in India? Or other countries that are "stealing our jobs" (remember the origional post was on manufactoring jobs, not IT jobs that mostly go to India)?
Actually, yes I have. People live in terrible conditions. However, not all people in India live in slums, and those who are likely to get outsourced jobs probably don't (because they need a minimum of education).
Of course, increase in anyone's salary in India will increase tax revenues for the state, so the case can be made that those living in the slums will benefit as well, but knowing Indian bureaucracy I wouldn't count on that too much...
Its not just like America except you can rent an apartmentfor $10 a day and a new widescreen TV set costs $20. They really are areas of the world which are poor.
Well, electronics are expensive to be sure, but in India every middle-class family has a TV and VCR (well, I haven't been there in a few years, maybe they have DVDs now). But you can get apartments for much less than 10$ a day. You can get a nice hotel room for about 60 rupees a day, which is a bit less than 1.50$USD. I gather you could get a comfortable-enough apartment for less than 25$ a month.
So you are saying we need protectionism to make sure poor nations don't improve? I know many (myself included) who would disagree with that.
Read the other response I wrote: economics is not a zero-sum game. We don't need to lower the standard of living here to improve it over there. Protectionism doesn't mean keeping developing nations poor. We need a certain degree of protectionism to protect the standard of living here, however there are plenty of things we can do to help the developing world - the first (and most obvious) is scrapping their debt and allowing them to protect their own vulnerable markets. One of the reasons the third world is what it is today is because their natural resources were plundered and pillaged by developed nations, and their markets were forced open to goods produced in developed nations.
You have to understand that the primary goal of outsourcing is not to raise the standard of living in impoverished nations - in fact, if salaries climb too much, the outsourcing companies will simply pack up and leave. No, outsourcing has only one goal: make a very small minority of people (large stockholders, who nearly all live in developed countries) richer by decreasing production costs. It is a complete subversion (I should say perversion) of the U.S. economy. I think it shows a very high level of free-market indoctrination that more people aren't protesting this in this forum...
No, because the increased profits made by stockholders remain in the first world, and even though salaries in developing countries will increase due to this, it will take a lot of time before they reach first-world levels (if ever). The problem is that since this is completely unregulated, it happens in a completely chaotic way. Unemployment will rise in the U.S., whose economy is already shaky, which could result in a serious economic crisis.
Economics is not a zero-sum game. It is possible to improve economic conditions in developing countries without decreasing standards of living here. However, that could mean stockholders (i.e. people who make money off of capital investments) would not make as much money in the short-term. It's up to us to choose: do we want people here to have jobs, or do we want to maximize ROI for those who live off of their portfolios?
And yet they are still better off than many of the people in third world countries who may get a chance to make a half-way decent living as a result of jobs coming by via 'outsourcing'.
:-)
Not necessarily. They may be better off on an absolute case (i.e. net income, assets), however to make a standard of living comparison you also have to factor in cost of living. Living in India on 2$ a day is relatively easy. Living on 2$ a day in the U.S. is almost impossible.
You also have to consider being used to a certain lifestyle. Basically, if your basic income decreases, it's going to create problems, no matter if you still make more money than others, because you are used to a certain level of comfort. That doesn't meant that you won't be able to adapt, however it will be an unpleasant experience.
I think what this highlights is the failure of the laissez-faire theory in economics. Basically, until countries reach similar standards of living, free movement of labor between these countries will disrupt the richer economy. Protectionism is a necessary tool of economic planning, and forsaking it in the name of some free-market leap of faith is foolish. The irony is that a lot of those who are now losing their jobs in the IT industry were die-hard believers in this neo-capitalist dogma...
I guess Marx was right: capitalism will crumble under the weight of its own contradictions after all...
Now he does that to try to emphasize the rapidity of change, but it also means that our current rise may NOT be due to humans after all as there were no humans on the planet when those shifts were recorded.
Then again, it may. Even if one or two shifts similar to the current one (at least you recognize there is one) occured in the past, that does not prove in any way that what's going on now is the same as what happened during those times. A lot more "grant money" would be necessary before a definite statement could be made in that sense. So it seems to me that you are jumping to conclusions, here - conclusions that support your agenda, obviously.
And back to my analogy, I didn't say someone who stopped (or didn't) smoke wouldn't get lung cancer, I simply said cancer.
No, that is the opposite of what you said. You said that "telling folks that by cutting down their green house gas emissions, they are going to prevent or even ameliorate global warming is like telling someone that by not smoking they will not get cancer" - in other words, that you can still get cancer even if you smoke (re-read the sentence above, I think you used too many negatives and lost count). What I replied is that, while you may still get other types of cancer, if you don't smoke you will have much less chances of getting lung cancer, therefore lowering the overall risk of getting a cancer.
Just like our changing the amount of green house gases may prevent a kind of global climate shift but by definition there are other mechanisms that don't involve humans that will still cause a global climate shift.
We are in an interglacial period. It's not supposed to get warmer than it is right now, and there is no proof that the currently measured warming is natural. Meanwhile, there have been millions of tons of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere from fossilized sources. Climate models predict an increase in temperature. An increased in temperature is measured and confirmed through satellite data. I think it's time to put two and two together, now.
The end result is the same, massive changes in where humanity can live comfortably
How do you know we can live comfortably in those massive changes? What about people who live near the coast? I'm sorry, but your blind faith that "everything's going to be all right" just doesn't cut it.
Of course not there isn't any grant money in it.
"Grant money" is infinitesimal compared to oil industry profits. It doesn't even register on the same scale. The Energy Industry has a lot more power and influence than do climate scientists. Enough with the goddam "scientists made up Global Warming to get more grant money" lie. Nobody believes it but a handful of conservative "enviroskeptic" americans. We're through listening to your oil-friendly pseudo-science.
Well, don't. See if I care! As for Lomborg's defense, the statistician gets many facts wrong. Here's more rebuttal of his provocative, but ultimately shaky theories.
You make the assumption that, because twice in a period of a 300 million years there have been rapid outbursts of greehouse gases, that this is one of them. There's a chance it might be, but there's also a chance it isn't. Are you ready to take that chance?
BTW your analogy to the smoker is faulty. By not smoking, a person will greatly reduce their chance of getting lung cancer - or will you try to deny this as well by claiming anectodical evidence of smokers who lived to be 100 years old?
On the contrary, a number of the papers that study things like ice cores in the antartic are worried because climate shifts were, in a geological sense, very rapid. Don't you even read this stuff?
"Very rapid" in a geological sense is still slower than the change we are seeing today. In any case, I'd like if you could provide some links to some of those papers you speak of. And since there's a few nit-pickers on the thread, I'll add that it's spelled the "Antarctic".
My two points are that the "global warming alarmists" are wasting innocent people's hard earned money by trying to get them to buy into the fact that they will figure out a way to control the weather
Straw man argument. Strike one!
Next thing you know there will be the "global magnetic crisis". The north and south poles are wandering, and they may even switch to opposite ends of the planet! This change has been accelerating over the last 100 years, it MUST be due to something people are doing.
Don't be silly. We know that human activity isn't responsible for magnetical pole switching, and that the switching is unlikely to affect us very much (though it might affect electrical devices somewhat).
Gee, two straw man arguments in a row...can we hope for strike three?
Can we stop sacrificing innocent people in the quest to appease the weather gods? It didn't work for the Mayans and it won't work today.
And you're out! Wow, do you really believe you'll convince anyone to follow your minority viewpoint with such logical fallacies?
a little over 500 years ago EVERYONE thought the world was flat, didn't make it true.
Not everyone did. Just most europeans (thanks, Christianity!).
Hasn't the planet been for millions of years and gone through many ice ages? Isn't it natural to assume that at some point it got warmer in between those ice ages?
If we were in an ice age I wouldn't be too worried about global warming. The problem is that the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. We are in an interglacial phase, it's not supposed to get warmer like this.
We have what 100 or so years of weather data?
Actually we can go back a lot further than 100 years by checking the ice caps at various depths.
The Earth was here long before us and will be here long after us.
Yeah, the idea is to make sure we're here for the longest time possible.
There isn't anything even close for global warming being caused by human activity. If someone showed me any/some evidence that I found convincing, I might change my mind.
/. readers feel the same way.
Well, the first step would be to ask what kind of evidence you'll find convincing. One thing that we do know, is that there there is an observable warming at ground level, which has now been corroborated by the same satellite evidence that enviroskeptic trumpeted in the spring, saying it proved their position was right. We do not know for sure that human warming is responsible, however it hasn't been disproven either. The basic fact that we don't know for sure is argument enough to devote a lot more money into climate research. If it turns out that humans don't really have much of an impact on climate, fine. We'll learn that the unprecedented warming we're seeing today is a freak occurence of mother nature, and we'll happily go on burning fossil fuels, releasing all these new greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (yes, new - all those hydrocarbons have been imprisoned in the earth, out of for atmospheric circulation, for millions of years).
Telling me that someone else found the evidence convincing just doesn't cut it.
I agree. Without seeing convincing evidence that human activity is not responsible for the measureable warming, I'm not ready to take the risk releasing increasing quantities of greenhouse gases in the air. And don't try to claim that "you can't prove a negative". I'm sorry, but the stakes are too high, the burden of proof here is on the enviroskeptics.
Apparently a lot of other
Good for them - though they still have to prove to me that human activity isn't involving in the current global warming. Anyway, looking at the messages in the thread, as well as the overall moderation, I'd say that there are ate least as many Slashdotters who don't agree with the enviroskeptic. But since you claim to be a scientist you should pursue the discussion with Mr_Matt instead - he's the atmospheric scientist here, after all.
But, I might say, "lets plant more trees". Or "lets dump Iron Sulfate out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean" (which starts a chain reaction that causes very large amounts of CO2 to be consumed and sink to the bottom of the ocean, where it's not in the atmosphere anymore and won't be for a very long time). And, I might say "lets worry about methane in the atmosphere and do something about it. (The greenhouse effect due to methane is much greater than due to CO2)"
I agree with you about methane - the huge cattle farms release a lot of this in the air, though I suspect that CO2 still has bigger impact due to volume. As far as planting trees is concerned, this would certainly help, however the tree planting techniques we have today are woefull inadequate. While tree harvesting has become extremely efficient through the use of heavy machinery, tree planting is still done by hand (due to the delicate nature of the operation, it's trickier and costlier to mechanize). It's hard, grueling work, and it doesn't pay that much. We'd be hard pressed to embark on the massive planting effort you suggest. The iron sulfate idea is intriguing, though I'd be curious to hear about the effect on marine life.
Then, after seeing if these things have effect I might even say we have to cut down on emissions. But, when I look at cost/benefit, the last item is just not at the top of the list.
You know something that really ticks me off? It's that everyone but the US has agreed on Kyoto. Only in the richest country of the world do we find so so many people bitching about how much it would cost. Everywhere else in the world, China, Russia, Europe, Canada, the rich and the poor, everyone has agreed. The problem is that it's not only America's atmosphere - it everyone's. So everyone has their word to say.
The U.S. should be targeted with economic sanctions by
Hey, what do you know, nit-picker #2...thanks for your totally useless post. At least you began by admitting you were trolling...
What's your point, except for the obvious (and annoying) nit-picking?
Yes, there are some people who don't believe that greenhouse gas emissions do not have an impact on global climate changes. There's quite a few that hang out on Slashdot, it seems. But the point is that there is many, many more that believe that, in fact, they do. Until there is convincing evidence either way, basic prudence tells me that I should act as if the much bigger group is right. If they turn out to be wrong, well then we'll just have wasted a bit of money - no more than we would have on a couple of wars, and somehow we manage to recover from those. But if they turn out to be right, and we didn't follow their advice...well, you get the idea.
The military spends billions on "contingency plans", preparing for attacks that may never come. I don't see any of you complaining about this...
1) There is clear evidence of global climate changes when humans were not present.
2) There is clear evidence of global climate changes when humans are present.
What you fail to mention is that, barring catastrophic events such as asteroid or comet strikes, the evidence of Global Climate Change when humans were not present shows a slow, gradual change. The changes we are now witnessing, however, are happening at a dramatically faster pace. As it happens, this small detail makes the rest of your otherwise silly argument irrelevant. Sorry.
If you think Exxon would give him money directly, then you have no clue about how things work in the Corporate PR world.
Note that I did not specifically say that HE got money from the Energy Lobby. I learned that trick from Dick Cheney. I do know that some people think there are lots of errors in his theories.
At one point every scientist believed that the world was flat.
I don't think you'll find a time where every scientist agreed that the world was flat. For one, if they did not follow the empirical method they can hardly be said to be scientists. Meanwhile in other cultures than Medieval Europe the Earth was often considered to be round, something that is easily verifiable if you travel by sea.
The reality is that the church was the strongest proponent of the flat Earth/Earth-centric models, and it was never exactly a hotbed of scientific thought.
First of all, if the north polar ice all melts the seas won't rise an inch since that ice is floating and thereby displacing the water already.
May I remind you that the Earth has two poles, but that only one is floating?
What's the problem with Global Warming? I guess you don't live near the equator...I'd respond to you more fully, but as you can see I'm already busy smacking some sense into another enviroskeptic. There's only so much bad faith I can handle at a time.
I suggest you read Mr_Matt's posts instead. Maybe you'll learn a bit more about the many problems that follow in the wake of Global Climate Change.
Wow, the professor just vaporized Scott Peterson.
That's why my original post was written "Any time you see every scientist agree on a very controversial topic, be very suspicious." The issues you mentioned are not controversial.
They were at some point - and like Global Climate Change, they were met with suspicion. In any case, whether or not a subject is controversial is irrelevant to the scientific process - what matters is whether it's true or not. Though when "every scientist agree" upon a topic it can hardly be called controversial, now, can it?
Convenient quoting on your part. Usually indicative of an agenda.
Nah, I was baiting ya. And you took it hook, line and sinker.
If all scientists truly agreed that human activity is having an effect on global climate (lower case is fine) then I don't think you'd have a lot of people doubting them (not just beginning, we've doubted them for a long time!). The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.
I'm sorry, but you just claimed the contrary to say that we should be suspicious of self-interest on the scientists' part. Contradicting yourself so quickly?
The fact is that all scientists do not agree this is true.
True. Only the vast majority.
The only thing this article proves is that the collection of articles they selected from the subset of scientific literature that they deemed worthy of reviewing supports their conclusion.
You're welcome to find an equally representative subset supporting the opposite thesis. Oh, right.
Oh really? Who is going to fund research proving that global warming is not real. Industry, that's about it. So they'll be quickly labeled an industry stooge by their colleagues (just as you did in your message) and their standing in the community will go down. Not because they're wrong but because they're going against the grain.
That's one way of putting it. Another way is that it's easy to make a lot of money with a science degree if you provide for hokey science and claim you're going "against the grain." You know, like those scientists hired by the tobacco industry to write papers on how smoking didn't cause lung cancer. That used to be controversial, you know. Now it isn't.
And they spend more time engaging in gloom and doom and explaining why the satellite record doesn't confirm their predictions than actually getting real science done.
Satellite record...I guess you're referring to the controversy earlier this year about how some satellite data tended to disprove Global Warming Models? Yeah, I remember that. You know what? The scientist who authored the original report has come out with new interpretation of the satellite data that, in fact, corroborates the observed warming on the ground.
When I said "In exchange they'll get huge grants from industries whose profits might be diminished by scientific enquiry," you replied: Or by "junk science." Take your pick of terms.
More bull. Junk science won't damage an industry, because all the industry has to do is prove that it's junk science. That's the thing with science, see? Because of the empiric model, junk science is pretty easy to disprove. Which is why scietific papers are usually published in peer-revied journals, so that other people can verify them.
Sorry, that's extremism talking. If there is a 10% chance of it being true and it's going to cost a trillion dollars worldwide to fix the problem then we had better be avoiding at least $10 trillion worth of damage.
Some damage to the environment (like lost biodiversity) is irreversible, how much is that worth? How much is worth most of Florida? How much are polar bears worth? How much is stopping desertification worth?
You're the extremist if this is really the only way you see this. You advocate extreme ROI. Fortunately, you represent a small minority (like all extremists), so there