I am not trying to discredit anyone - simply point out that this debate is (or should be) very interdisciplinary
Why? The name "climate change" itself states it is a climate issue, other disiplines can lend a hand if they can provide evidence (Geology often does this for many endeavours) but it is still an issue within the climate discipline, no other.
Oh, so to make an innovative program based on a new concept, the people producing that program must have also been the first people ever to think of that idea?
I bet your one of those people that still uses the Mosaic web browser, claiming it's more "innovative" than all the others.
That THEORY might be mentioned with arguments for and against it, but there is equal amount of evidence for other possibilities regarding the origin of life on this planet
There are no serious arguments against "natural selection". "natural selection" has nothing to do with the "first spark of life" which is what you appear to be referring to.
Are you seriously trying to say you have proper evidence that contradicts the "primordial soup" theory? If you actually do (which I highly doubt), you would become world famous in academia if you could write a paper on it!
because most people here are biased towards evolution as being the source of all life.
They are only biased in the same way that a jury might be made biased upon seeing an overwhelming amount of evidence. They have reached their conclusions based on the large amount of compelling evidence, what have you reached your upon?
The Salesmen's job is to sell the product (i.e. the politician selling the idea of an easily won war) The Engineer's job is to actually deliver the product (i.e. the army actually winning the said war)
No-one ever seems to listen to the engineers, it's always the salesman who the client communicates with; the half which has absolutely no experience of what is actually required to get the job done (or whether it is even technically possible).
To me, the parallels between the current Iraq war situation and your typical incompetently specified I.T. project are startling.
And with GPS in phones now, you're boss can find you and see where you are at for you're one hour lunch break and give you a call to talk about things.
This is already possible, and it doesn't require a special GPS handset. There are several services which allow people to 'track' the location of a mobile phone (I'm guessing a 'cellphone' is the same thing also) users by the same triangulation method the actual phone companies use to decide which base-station you should be connected to so that you get the best reception.
In cities (where there are normally more base-stations than in rural areas) this can normally pinpoint your location to within a couple of dozen metres. A friend of mine says his boss uses it to make sure he isn't slacking off when out on the road.
Lots of things are still legal in merry olde England that are not legal elsewhere though.
Fireworks for one, Magic Mushrooms for another (although it illegal to use them for there cool use but try prove it, the police don't bother). Cannabis is basically legal (the most you can get for possession is a caution), air rifles are legal, so are BBguns.
Sure, the U.K. has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but then again has amongst the lowest gun crime rates in the world. Personally, I prefer it this way.
Seems to me most the enjoyable things in life are slowly becoming legal while the bad things are becoming more illegal. So stop whinging!
But do they also filter those wholesale connections?
I have no idea whether they do or don't but I would have thought it was only the retail connections they filter, otherwise they would surely be entering a legal minefield (although I guess it is doubtful that any other ISP is going to take them to court for blocking child porn websites).
I'm sorry, but we're not talking about kryptonite or magical dark matter here..
We are not talking about actual research suggesting most people are actually seriously concerned about the matter either. A semi-tabloid newspaper publishes a single article about some freaks' concerns and slashdot takes it seriously. Please, it's not like even the Times gave the story much credit.
This is not a concern of pretty much all UK schools, their pupils or their parents.
The reason behind the story is simply that newspapers sell papers based on how sensational the issues are. If they could convince people to believe parents won't sending their children to school because of fears of radioactive textbooks, they would print that also.
while British Telecom, the UK's largest ISP, voluntarily blocks child pornography as part of its CleanFeed program
Actually, NTL/Telewest is the UK's largest ISP.
from a recent BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6039740.stm: "The UK's largest residential internet provider is currently NTL, which has 2.9 million home customers, followed by BT on 2.2 million."
Seriously, the way it works is just pure propaganda. It reduces choices to black or white.
umm, that isn't anything like what propaganda is.
From m-w.com: 1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions 2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person 3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
How does "It reduces choices to black or white" satisfy any of those definitions?
Who is Bill O'Reilly and why the hell should I care about what he has got to say?
From the article he doesn't appear to have an academic or industry credentials on the subject to his name so why has he got any more insight than anyone else on the street?
Surely researchers who study the issue would be a better source of information.
I've also always found it amusing how a race of people who have lived in Australia for 45,000 years with extremely minimal (virtually non-existant) environmental damage can be deemed to live "unsustainable" lifestyles by settlers who within 200 years have cut-down virtually all the country's forests and rainforests, polluted (in some cases radioactively) thousands of hectares of land and managed to introduce foreign species which have decimated much of the indigenous wildlife. All in only 200 years, that is 1/225th of the time the aborigines have been able to live sustainably of Australia's fertile land, fat chance the Australian wildlife and ecosystem (or probably even us!) will still be around in 45,000 years time.
I wholeheartedly agree. Freedom of association is one of the most important rights on the same level as freedom of speech (which it is very much inter-tangled with).
It's ironic how strikingly authoritarian some civil rights legislation can be. If bigots want to be bigoted then people have to accept that and if they disagree with it then they should not associate with them. Forcing them to change their views is itself a very bigoted approach.
Evidence is not needed as to why it's not warming, because it is showing a warming trend. I don't know what "satellite record" you are referring to but it is out of sync with the vast majority of satellite records and other data.
...and record draughts in the Amazon rainforest are just a couple of recent examples
erm, I meant "drought" rather than "draughts". I do not personally know of any evidence of a recent increase in the playing of the game draughts within the Amazon rainforest.
Then why is there warming in the smokey Northern Hemisphere and none at all in the Southern Hemisphere
If I had mod points it would be -1 for "Utter Bullshit".
There is much evidence of a general warming trend occurring in the southern hemisphere, pretty much the same amount as that occurring in the northern hemisphere. There are also many recordings of record freak occurrences associated with the gentle warming that appears to be occurring all around the globe; record sized icebergs breaking off from Antarctica and record draughts in the Amazon rainforest are just a couple of recent examples.
This marks a sharp u-turn in policy from that of the previous government.
I hate this phrase of political lingo that journalists seem to love so much! Formulating a national policy isn't driving a car, they don't make "u-turns", they make "dramatic changes in policy" or something to that effect.
FFS, not everyone who listens to politics has the brain of a snail...sure the vast majority do, but some journalists should recognise not everyone prefers the news relayed to them in a mixture of cliches and analogies. Unfortunately, this counts out pretty much all the major news organisations.
If you replace "everyone else" with "the vast majority" than the grandposter's comment is correct. The vast majority of scientists in this field don't understand how oil companies can keep on saying "business as usual" when their product is running out.
Most scientists do recognise it would be feasibly possible for oil companies to hold the world to ransom and say "we'll offer you this sub-standard product for 100x the price you use to pay" but that is more blackmail than proper business.
They need a visionary of the order of James Read (who has his own problems) to come up with a secure decentralized 'ARPANET' of healthcare.
If only you were present at one of the design specification meetings, you could have saved the country billions!...or perhaps your suggestion would have been scrapped like all the other decentralised solutions which were being talked about a few years ago when the project started.
It is a crying shame that so much money has been given to idiots when there was no hope of success. Google, YouTube and MySpace have millions of users, and work reasonably securely, and store lots of data. What's wrong with Accenture and Fujitsu that makes them unable to execute?
Surely this is a total self-contradiction. First you say there's no hope that such a system could work, then you quote several examples where a similar system does work, not that they have much relevance to the project in question though.
That Veterans health project is on a completely of different scale though.
The NHS (British National Health Service) is among the world's top 5 largest employers and a yearly budget of just under $200 billion, providing free health-care to 60 million people. The current project is not much short of a complete overhaul of its I.T. systems. At its current state it doesn't look like it will be a disaster, just a lot more costly and slower to develop than first acknowledged.
It's not that "government + healthcare + technology" = disaster, but "any massive and unique IT project" = disaster! Massive projects almost always cost more and take longer than initially stated, its just how the game goes.
Toxic compounds can also cause additional Cardon Dioxide release over the long term as they destroy plant-life (via acid rain and other such mechanisms) which then releases CO2 as they decompose.
Of course this is in addition to the millions of people air pollution kills every year which tends to go unreported.
Slashdot Mirror
Why? The name "climate change" itself states it is a climate issue, other disiplines can lend a hand if they can provide evidence (Geology often does this for many endeavours) but it is still an issue within the climate discipline, no other.
Oh, so to make an innovative program based on a new concept, the people producing that program must have also been the first people ever to think of that idea?
I bet your one of those people that still uses the Mosaic web browser, claiming it's more "innovative" than all the others.
There are no serious arguments against "natural selection". "natural selection" has nothing to do with the "first spark of life" which is what you appear to be referring to.
Are you seriously trying to say you have proper evidence that contradicts the "primordial soup" theory? If you actually do (which I highly doubt), you would become world famous in academia if you could write a paper on it!
They are only biased in the same way that a jury might be made biased upon seeing an overwhelming amount of evidence. They have reached their conclusions based on the large amount of compelling evidence, what have you reached your upon?
Its the old Salesmen vs. Engineer problem.
The Salesmen's job is to sell the product (i.e. the politician selling the idea of an easily won war)
The Engineer's job is to actually deliver the product (i.e. the army actually winning the said war)
No-one ever seems to listen to the engineers, it's always the salesman who the client communicates with; the half which has absolutely no experience of what is actually required to get the job done (or whether it is even technically possible).
To me, the parallels between the current Iraq war situation and your typical incompetently specified I.T. project are startling.
This is already possible, and it doesn't require a special GPS handset. There are several services which allow people to 'track' the location of a mobile phone (I'm guessing a 'cellphone' is the same thing also) users by the same triangulation method the actual phone companies use to decide which base-station you should be connected to so that you get the best reception.
In cities (where there are normally more base-stations than in rural areas) this can normally pinpoint your location to within a couple of dozen metres. A friend of mine says his boss uses it to make sure he isn't slacking off when out on the road.
Lots of things are still legal in merry olde England that are not legal elsewhere though.
Fireworks for one, Magic Mushrooms for another (although it illegal to use them for there cool use but try prove it, the police don't bother). Cannabis is basically legal (the most you can get for possession is a caution), air rifles are legal, so are BBguns.
Sure, the U.K. has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but then again has amongst the lowest gun crime rates in the world. Personally, I prefer it this way.
Seems to me most the enjoyable things in life are slowly becoming legal while the bad things are becoming more illegal. So stop whinging!
But do they also filter those wholesale connections?
I have no idea whether they do or don't but I would have thought it was only the retail connections they filter, otherwise they would surely be entering a legal minefield (although I guess it is doubtful that any other ISP is going to take them to court for blocking child porn websites).
We are not talking about actual research suggesting most people are actually seriously concerned about the matter either. A semi-tabloid newspaper publishes a single article about some freaks' concerns and slashdot takes it seriously. Please, it's not like even the Times gave the story much credit.
What fud!
This is not a concern of pretty much all UK schools, their pupils or their parents.
The reason behind the story is simply that newspapers sell papers based on how sensational the issues are. If they could convince people to believe parents won't sending their children to school because of fears of radioactive textbooks, they would print that also.
Actually, NTL/Telewest is the UK's largest ISP.
from a recent BBC article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6039740.stm:
"The UK's largest residential internet provider is currently NTL, which has 2.9 million home customers, followed by BT on 2.2 million."
umm, that isn't anything like what propaganda is.
From m-w.com:
1 capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
2 : the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
3 : ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
How does "It reduces choices to black or white" satisfy any of those definitions?
good point, shame about the clichés.
Who is Bill O'Reilly and why the hell should I care about what he has got to say?
From the article he doesn't appear to have an academic or industry credentials on the subject to his name so why has he got any more insight than anyone else on the street?
Surely researchers who study the issue would be a better source of information.
I've also always found it amusing how a race of people who have lived in Australia for 45,000 years with extremely minimal (virtually non-existant) environmental damage can be deemed to live "unsustainable" lifestyles by settlers who within 200 years have cut-down virtually all the country's forests and rainforests, polluted (in some cases radioactively) thousands of hectares of land and managed to introduce foreign species which have decimated much of the indigenous wildlife. All in only 200 years, that is 1/225th of the time the aborigines have been able to live sustainably of Australia's fertile land, fat chance the Australian wildlife and ecosystem (or probably even us!) will still be around in 45,000 years time.
I wholeheartedly agree. Freedom of association is one of the most important rights on the same level as freedom of speech (which it is very much inter-tangled with).
It's ironic how strikingly authoritarian some civil rights legislation can be. If bigots want to be bigoted then people have to accept that and if they disagree with it then they should not associate with them. Forcing them to change their views is itself a very bigoted approach.
Evidence is not needed as to why it's not warming, because it is showing a warming trend. I don't know what "satellite record" you are referring to but it is out of sync with the vast majority of satellite records and other data.
erm, I meant "drought" rather than "draughts". I do not personally know of any evidence of a recent increase in the playing of the game draughts within the Amazon rainforest.
If I had mod points it would be -1 for "Utter Bullshit".
There is much evidence of a general warming trend occurring in the southern hemisphere, pretty much the same amount as that occurring in the northern hemisphere. There are also many recordings of record freak occurrences associated with the gentle warming that appears to be occurring all around the globe; record sized icebergs breaking off from Antarctica and record draughts in the Amazon rainforest are just a couple of recent examples.
Oh O.K., so opposing views are purely political fantasy, but all your assertions are based purely on science.
I hate this phrase of political lingo that journalists seem to love so much! Formulating a national policy isn't driving a car, they don't make "u-turns", they make "dramatic changes in policy" or something to that effect.
FFS, not everyone who listens to politics has the brain of a snail
If you replace "everyone else" with "the vast majority" than the grandposter's comment is correct. The vast majority of scientists in this field don't understand how oil companies can keep on saying "business as usual" when their product is running out.
Most scientists do recognise it would be feasibly possible for oil companies to hold the world to ransom and say "we'll offer you this sub-standard product for 100x the price you use to pay" but that is more blackmail than proper business.
If only you were present at one of the design specification meetings, you could have saved the country billions!
Surely this is a total self-contradiction. First you say there's no hope that such a system could work, then you quote several examples where a similar system does work, not that they have much relevance to the project in question though.
That Veterans health project is on a completely of different scale though.
The NHS (British National Health Service) is among the world's top 5 largest employers and a yearly budget of just under $200 billion, providing free health-care to 60 million people. The current project is not much short of a complete overhaul of its I.T. systems. At its current state it doesn't look like it will be a disaster, just a lot more costly and slower to develop than first acknowledged.
It's not that "government + healthcare + technology" = disaster, but "any massive and unique IT project" = disaster! Massive projects almost always cost more and take longer than initially stated, its just how the game goes.
Many water companies already treat tap water with gamma radiation to remove things like bacteria.
Radiation - unlike radioactive particles - won't cause any further radioactivity within water.
Toxic compounds can also cause additional Cardon Dioxide release over the long term as they destroy plant-life (via acid rain and other such mechanisms) which then releases CO2 as they decompose.
Of course this is in addition to the millions of people air pollution kills every year which tends to go unreported.