The Earth has not been warming at the rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade since the last ice age. The RATE of warming has increased dramatically in the past several decades. We're not "forgetting" at all. We're taking into account more data than you are.
Yes, as the temperature increases the Earth will radiate more heat into space, so if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes, the planet's temperature will stabilize at its new equilibrium point. I think we all know this. In any case, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still increasing, so we won't be hitting the new equilibrium temperature any time soon. The warming will continue for decades after we reduce carbon dioxide emissions dramatically, for this reason.
Burning plants or animals that have been recently alive will not increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. It will only return CO2 to the atmosphere that has been removed within the past few years. You're just sending that CO2 to the next phase in the carbon cycle. It's digging up billions of tons of fossil fuels that have been buried for millions of years and burning them that increases the CO2 content of the atmosphere. That is adding carbon to the carbon cycle.
Individual efforts will not decrease carbon dioxide emissions. To do that, we will need to build power plants and vehicles to use energy sources other than fossil fuels. Individuals cannot do such a thing individually. Vote democrats into office and they can take the steps to do these things.
I agree. Sooner or later a couple of people are going to have the same thought about something, it's not plagiarism, it is nature. There are finite ways of expressing the same concept. That's where I see the big failing of these services like TurnItIn happening; sooner or later their databases will be so huge there's no way to NOT plagiarize something. You can't account for it and you can't prevent it. I think the larger issue is being completely ignored: does the student actually understand what he/she is talking about? Or are they just trying to pass the course with minimal effort?
The thorium fuel supply is limited, however. We'll eventually need to go directly or indirectly (wind, hydroelectric) to solar anyway. Well, either that or fusion, if we can get it to work at large scales with only deuterium (as opposed to tritium). Still, fission might be worthwhile as a stopgap measure.
Yes. If you could undergo a procedure that creates more the the neuronal connections that are correlated with intelligence, would you become more intelligent? I suppose you would, but the question really is, "How much more intelligent would it make you?" In other words, are there other brain differences that account for the increase in intelligence, such as chemical levels or the speed of neurons? Likewise, if you did exercises to increase your intelligence, would they increase the neuronal connections?
The Copenhagen Accord recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius". If you have some evidence that warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius would be just fine, I'd like to see it. Until then, it looks like there's widespread agreement that we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to avoid excessive warming.
The current temperature rise is a blip at the current time, when it's not much of a problem. The problem is that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide, the warming will increase, and the earth could be warmer than at any other time that graph shows. In the past, when there were fewer than seven billion people on the planet, it wasn't too much of a problem. That's what the problem is... it will be hard economically on the estimated ten billion people to live with several degrees of warming. That's the problem, not the current warming!
The warming effect takes decades to centuries to stabilize. Even if we stopped carbon dioxide emissions immediately, the temperature would continue to rise until it reached the new equilibrium point. You don't turn on a burner and then declare after one minute that the burner warms the water only 30 degrees. It may take several minutes for the water to boil.
No one is telling you to go back to a hut in the middle of a forest. You're making it up. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions means producing energy using solar, wind, and nuclear sources, and improving energy efficiency. It will mean higher tech than we have now, not lower tech.
But in any case, we can simply tax goods from countries with higher carbon dioxide emissions. That will give them economic incentive to lower their emissions.
Not really. Most people drive their cars every day for practical purposes such as getting to work. Most gun owners use their guns only for recreational purposes, such as hunting. Many guns are owned only for self protection, and most of those are never used for that purpose. So, yes, cars kill lots of people, but they are mostly used for practical, beneficial reasons. Guns owned by private owners mostly kill or hurt innocent animals or people. That's not to say I'm against others owning guns, but I wouldn't choose to own one.
Before switching someone to a different operating system, switch them over to applications that work on both. Switching someone from Windows to Linux is going to be much more difficult if they're used to Internet Explorer or MS Office, and especially if they have some software for which there is no good Linux equivalent. Switch them over to Chrome or Firefox, LibreOffice or OpenOffice, and so forth, first. Then you can switch them to Linux. Good luck!
But as many posters point out, if Windows works for them, they'll have little reason to switch. It might make sense to switch if you are in charge of dozens of computers in a corporate environment, because you could spend significantly less on software and maintenance. Again, the way to succeed there is to switch applications first.
It is not up to individuals to reduce CO2 output. That will be done by converting power plants to alternative energy sources such as solar, wind or nuclear, converting cars and planes to use biofuels, and increasing energy efficiency. I think the main objection to reducing CO2 emissions is that people think it will mean a lifestyle change. Possibly the biggest lifestyle change we'll need is converting to CFL bulbs (but we'll probably eventually convert to LED lighting). Perhaps we'll do a lot more telecommuting, too.
It's not *my* definition. It's *the* definition. Yes, Titan would be a planet if it were in its own orbit, as would most of the solar system's largest moons.
The problem is not that it's too small. It's large enough to be a spheroid, so it's large enough to be a planet. If it existed in an orbit that was free of other large objects (e.g. Neptune and Kuiper belt objects), it would be a planet.
It's more post hoc, ergo proper hoc (after that, therefore because of that). Just because someone tried drug X first does not mean taking drug X caused the person to begin taking other drugs. The very idea of a magic "gateway drug" that if we could get people to stop using would cause people to no longer abuse drugs is ludicrous. It's just a way of making marijuana look bad, because that's been the purported gateway drug for decades. I think alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and aspirin are more likely to be the first drug someone has taken rather than marijuana.
A result reached in only one reviewed paper is often next to nothing. That's why science requires repeatability. Any particular scientific paper stands a good chance of being wrong, for a number of reasons. If the paper requires a 5% probability or less of getting the results by chance alone, and most papers that get negative results are not published, then there's a higher than 10% probability that a published paper's results were obtained through chance alone -- the researchers were just lucky. Then there are numerous mistakes that can be made, although many of these mistakes are weeded out in peer review. And some scientists fudge the data or just publish outright fraudulent research.
On the other hand, if there are hundreds of research papers published over decades of research, and the vast majority of papers get results that are consistent with each other, and scientists have reached a consensus that the research is valid, then that's a completely different story. Unfortunately, most people (even Slashdot posters) can't distinguish between these two very different cases.
In this case, though, it looks like the numerous papers published previously were mere predictions. This latest paper provides observations that do not match the predictions. If these observations are repeatable, then it looks like the predictions were just wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
[citation needed]
Is there an alternative hypothesis that explains the warming? Is there data to support this hypothesis? If so, let's hear it!
The Earth has not been warming at the rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade since the last ice age. The RATE of warming has increased dramatically in the past several decades. We're not "forgetting" at all. We're taking into account more data than you are.
Yes, as the temperature increases the Earth will radiate more heat into space, so if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stabilizes, the planet's temperature will stabilize at its new equilibrium point. I think we all know this. In any case, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is still increasing, so we won't be hitting the new equilibrium temperature any time soon. The warming will continue for decades after we reduce carbon dioxide emissions dramatically, for this reason.
I don't know about you, but when I am driving and I MIGHT be about to have an accident, I SLOW THE HELL DOWN to be safe.
Why not build solar, wind, and nuclear plants? There's another option.
Burning plants or animals that have been recently alive will not increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. It will only return CO2 to the atmosphere that has been removed within the past few years. You're just sending that CO2 to the next phase in the carbon cycle. It's digging up billions of tons of fossil fuels that have been buried for millions of years and burning them that increases the CO2 content of the atmosphere. That is adding carbon to the carbon cycle.
Individual efforts will not decrease carbon dioxide emissions. To do that, we will need to build power plants and vehicles to use energy sources other than fossil fuels. Individuals cannot do such a thing individually. Vote democrats into office and they can take the steps to do these things.
I agree. Sooner or later a couple of people are going to have the same thought about something, it's not plagiarism, it is nature. There are finite ways of expressing the same concept. That's where I see the big failing of these services like TurnItIn happening; sooner or later their databases will be so huge there's no way to NOT plagiarize something. You can't account for it and you can't prevent it. I think the larger issue is being completely ignored: does the student actually understand what he/she is talking about? Or are they just trying to pass the course with minimal effort?
The thorium fuel supply is limited, however. We'll eventually need to go directly or indirectly (wind, hydroelectric) to solar anyway. Well, either that or fusion, if we can get it to work at large scales with only deuterium (as opposed to tritium). Still, fission might be worthwhile as a stopgap measure.
Yes. If you could undergo a procedure that creates more the the neuronal connections that are correlated with intelligence, would you become more intelligent? I suppose you would, but the question really is, "How much more intelligent would it make you?" In other words, are there other brain differences that account for the increase in intelligence, such as chemical levels or the speed of neurons? Likewise, if you did exercises to increase your intelligence, would they increase the neuronal connections?
The Copenhagen Accord recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius". If you have some evidence that warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius would be just fine, I'd like to see it. Until then, it looks like there's widespread agreement that we will need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to avoid excessive warming.
The current temperature rise is a blip at the current time, when it's not much of a problem. The problem is that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide, the warming will increase, and the earth could be warmer than at any other time that graph shows. In the past, when there were fewer than seven billion people on the planet, it wasn't too much of a problem. That's what the problem is... it will be hard economically on the estimated ten billion people to live with several degrees of warming. That's the problem, not the current warming!
The warming effect takes decades to centuries to stabilize. Even if we stopped carbon dioxide emissions immediately, the temperature would continue to rise until it reached the new equilibrium point. You don't turn on a burner and then declare after one minute that the burner warms the water only 30 degrees. It may take several minutes for the water to boil.
No one is telling you to go back to a hut in the middle of a forest. You're making it up. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions means producing energy using solar, wind, and nuclear sources, and improving energy efficiency. It will mean higher tech than we have now, not lower tech.
But in any case, we can simply tax goods from countries with higher carbon dioxide emissions. That will give them economic incentive to lower their emissions.
Not really. Most people drive their cars every day for practical purposes such as getting to work. Most gun owners use their guns only for recreational purposes, such as hunting. Many guns are owned only for self protection, and most of those are never used for that purpose. So, yes, cars kill lots of people, but they are mostly used for practical, beneficial reasons. Guns owned by private owners mostly kill or hurt innocent animals or people. That's not to say I'm against others owning guns, but I wouldn't choose to own one.
Before switching someone to a different operating system, switch them over to applications that work on both. Switching someone from Windows to Linux is going to be much more difficult if they're used to Internet Explorer or MS Office, and especially if they have some software for which there is no good Linux equivalent. Switch them over to Chrome or Firefox, LibreOffice or OpenOffice, and so forth, first. Then you can switch them to Linux. Good luck!
But as many posters point out, if Windows works for them, they'll have little reason to switch. It might make sense to switch if you are in charge of dozens of computers in a corporate environment, because you could spend significantly less on software and maintenance. Again, the way to succeed there is to switch applications first.
It is not up to individuals to reduce CO2 output. That will be done by converting power plants to alternative energy sources such as solar, wind or nuclear, converting cars and planes to use biofuels, and increasing energy efficiency. I think the main objection to reducing CO2 emissions is that people think it will mean a lifestyle change. Possibly the biggest lifestyle change we'll need is converting to CFL bulbs (but we'll probably eventually convert to LED lighting). Perhaps we'll do a lot more telecommuting, too.
Every baby that dies is a win for evolution. But that's not how the baby sees it at all, nor the parents!
My point is that one of those things is *not* its size.
It's not *my* definition. It's *the* definition. Yes, Titan would be a planet if it were in its own orbit, as would most of the solar system's largest moons.
The problem is not that it's too small. It's large enough to be a spheroid, so it's large enough to be a planet. If it existed in an orbit that was free of other large objects (e.g. Neptune and Kuiper belt objects), it would be a planet.
It's more post hoc, ergo proper hoc (after that, therefore because of that). Just because someone tried drug X first does not mean taking drug X caused the person to begin taking other drugs. The very idea of a magic "gateway drug" that if we could get people to stop using would cause people to no longer abuse drugs is ludicrous. It's just a way of making marijuana look bad, because that's been the purported gateway drug for decades. I think alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and aspirin are more likely to be the first drug someone has taken rather than marijuana.
A result reached in only one reviewed paper is often next to nothing. That's why science requires repeatability. Any particular scientific paper stands a good chance of being wrong, for a number of reasons. If the paper requires a 5% probability or less of getting the results by chance alone, and most papers that get negative results are not published, then there's a higher than 10% probability that a published paper's results were obtained through chance alone -- the researchers were just lucky. Then there are numerous mistakes that can be made, although many of these mistakes are weeded out in peer review. And some scientists fudge the data or just publish outright fraudulent research.
On the other hand, if there are hundreds of research papers published over decades of research, and the vast majority of papers get results that are consistent with each other, and scientists have reached a consensus that the research is valid, then that's a completely different story. Unfortunately, most people (even Slashdot posters) can't distinguish between these two very different cases.
In this case, though, it looks like the numerous papers published previously were mere predictions. This latest paper provides observations that do not match the predictions. If these observations are repeatable, then it looks like the predictions were just wrong.
Because that would be the opposite of a leap second maybe?