I think it's mostly experienced users installing Firefox and Chrome on their friends' and families' computers. It cuts down on the amount of work spent cleaning up malware attacks.
Whether the sample is representative or not. The W3Schools site is not very representative because it's aimed at web developers, not the general public. If you look at Wikipedia's usage share page you can find some samples that are more representative. They all show IE above 37% usage.
What users is Google notifying? Users of the Google website? Users of Google Chrome? I went to google.com using Firefox and Chrome and did not see any notification.
Hardly anyone runs the old version of Chrome just a week or two after a new version is released. Why the hell are you testing against many different versions of Chrome? Do you bill by the hour?
Gee, it's a good thing we started driving cars and avoided the manure problem, even though "skeptics" back then imagined all sorts of insurmountable problems with cars. Now can we switch to alternative energy sources and likewise avoid global warming, even though today's skeptics claim it's a socialist plot to control everyone by destroying the economy?
Over 100 years ago, Arrhenius predicted it would take 3000 years to double the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At this rate, it will take less than 200. Time and again, we've seen the actual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and associated warming exceed predictions. It cuts both ways -- it might not as be bad as we predict, but it may be worse. Let's expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.
Are you taking into account the energy you do not directly use? All the products you buy need to be shipped to a store, and that takes energy. When you work in an office, it takes energy to power the infrastructure. You can look at the energy use by sector to understand a bit more.
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions dramatically is not something that can be done by individuals. We need to get energy from sources other than fossil fuels. That's up to the people that build power plants and oil refineries. One thing that individuals can do, however, is to exercise energy efficiency, for example, buy buying CFL bulbs or insulating their houses. I see lots of people doing those things, but even if we all did that it would perhaps decrease carbon dioxide emissions 30-40%.
We're emitting 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Every person on the planet would have to plant tons of trees every year to keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere constant. We simply don't have enough land to hold that many trees. We've tried adding iron to the ocean to help algae production, but it didn't work out. You can read more about carbon sequestration.
Even if we immediately stop burning any fossil fuels, it should still get warmer. It takes hundreds of years for the carbon cycle to take the excess out of the atmosphere. We're committed to continued warming right now. The only thing we can do is commit to less warming or more warming.
There's one more thing worse: the people who complain about how annoying the people who complain about the meaningless bump in version numbers are. Boy those guys are real jerks!
Yes. The reason that it was a mistake is that relativity predicts that the universe must be contracting or expanding. Because Einstein thought that the universe was static, instead of actually making the prediction, he added a fudge factor of gravitation repulsion that would keep the universe from collapsing under its own gravity. So he was wrong, because the universe is in fact expanding.
The reason it was the biggest mistake of his life is that adding gravitational repulsion to gravity produces an unstable equilibrium, so it would not have resulted in a steady state even if he was right. All matter would have had to have been equally distributed across the universe, and any perturbation would have caused local clumps that would collapse under gravity. So he incorrectly added his incorrect fudge factor. He was very, very wrong.
There's a reason he called it his biggest mistake. He made an obviously wrong prediction instead of correctly predicting the expansion of the universe. The fact that we now detect a repulsive force has nothing to do with Einstein's prediction except that it's also a repulsive force. It's just coincidence.
A quick glance at a graph of worldwide temperatures assures me that there has been very significant warming over the past 15 years. Not to mention the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice. So, yes, it seems just as simple as I say.
The observation that would not fit the prediction would be little or no warming. The falsifiable hypothesis is that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes warming. There are literally hundreds of published scientific papers you can read about the topic. It's been a very active area of research for decades. I'll point you to just one short summary of the research results.
Yes, without any proposed mechanism of causality, a correlation is just a correlation and does not imply causality. But with CFCs and the ozone layer, there is a mechanism of causality. CFCs catalyze the reaction of ozone molecules breaking up into oxygen molecules.
I haven't seen anyone propose "world government" for the solution to global warming. The solution put forward has been for countries to agree to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will increase costs, but effects of global warming will increase costs, too. The debate is what amount of spending on reducing carbon dioxide emissions will minimize total costs.
How is climate change complicated? You increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and the planet warms. That's about as complicated as you put a blanket over you and you keep warm. Both mechanisms decrease the heat radiated away. Over 100 years ago, Arrhenius gave estimates of global warming that closely match the latest observations. It's not complicated at all.
I have yet to see that Wikipedia. I go to the one with people collaborating on making articles better. Yes, occasionally a jerk comes along and tries to push a particular point of view, but they generally come to their senses quickly or just go away, often after being blocked from editing.
Slashdot Mirror
According to Wikipedia's page on usage share and Chuck Upsdell's browser trends page, mobile browsing accounts for under 10% usage. Mac and Linux users also take up under 10% usage. Most of the non-IE usage is people using Firefox or Chrome on Windows computers.
I think it's mostly experienced users installing Firefox and Chrome on their friends' and families' computers. It cuts down on the amount of work spent cleaning up malware attacks.
Whether the sample is representative or not. The W3Schools site is not very representative because it's aimed at web developers, not the general public. If you look at Wikipedia's usage share page you can find some samples that are more representative. They all show IE above 37% usage.
I access my gmail through Thunderbird using IMAP. If I need to access gmail from another computer, I can use gmail's web interface.
What users is Google notifying? Users of the Google website? Users of Google Chrome? I went to google.com using Firefox and Chrome and did not see any notification.
Hardly anyone runs the old version of Chrome just a week or two after a new version is released. Why the hell are you testing against many different versions of Chrome? Do you bill by the hour?
Gee, it's a good thing we started driving cars and avoided the manure problem, even though "skeptics" back then imagined all sorts of insurmountable problems with cars. Now can we switch to alternative energy sources and likewise avoid global warming, even though today's skeptics claim it's a socialist plot to control everyone by destroying the economy?
Over 100 years ago, Arrhenius predicted it would take 3000 years to double the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At this rate, it will take less than 200. Time and again, we've seen the actual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and associated warming exceed predictions. It cuts both ways -- it might not as be bad as we predict, but it may be worse. Let's expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.
Are you taking into account the energy you do not directly use? All the products you buy need to be shipped to a store, and that takes energy. When you work in an office, it takes energy to power the infrastructure. You can look at the energy use by sector to understand a bit more.
What's causing all the ice to melt, then?
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions dramatically is not something that can be done by individuals. We need to get energy from sources other than fossil fuels. That's up to the people that build power plants and oil refineries. One thing that individuals can do, however, is to exercise energy efficiency, for example, buy buying CFL bulbs or insulating their houses. I see lots of people doing those things, but even if we all did that it would perhaps decrease carbon dioxide emissions 30-40%.
http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab/Caldeira_research/Archer_Eby.html
We're emitting 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Every person on the planet would have to plant tons of trees every year to keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere constant. We simply don't have enough land to hold that many trees. We've tried adding iron to the ocean to help algae production, but it didn't work out. You can read more about carbon sequestration.
Sea level rise wiping out coastal cities, droughts, flooding due to excessive rainfall, to name the most important problems with warmer temperatures.
Even if we immediately stop burning any fossil fuels, it should still get warmer. It takes hundreds of years for the carbon cycle to take the excess out of the atmosphere. We're committed to continued warming right now. The only thing we can do is commit to less warming or more warming.
You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
There's one more thing worse: the people who complain about how annoying the people who complain about the meaningless bump in version numbers are. Boy those guys are real jerks!
Yes. The reason that it was a mistake is that relativity predicts that the universe must be contracting or expanding. Because Einstein thought that the universe was static, instead of actually making the prediction, he added a fudge factor of gravitation repulsion that would keep the universe from collapsing under its own gravity. So he was wrong, because the universe is in fact expanding.
The reason it was the biggest mistake of his life is that adding gravitational repulsion to gravity produces an unstable equilibrium, so it would not have resulted in a steady state even if he was right. All matter would have had to have been equally distributed across the universe, and any perturbation would have caused local clumps that would collapse under gravity. So he incorrectly added his incorrect fudge factor. He was very, very wrong.
There's a reason he called it his biggest mistake. He made an obviously wrong prediction instead of correctly predicting the expansion of the universe. The fact that we now detect a repulsive force has nothing to do with Einstein's prediction except that it's also a repulsive force. It's just coincidence.
A quick glance at a graph of worldwide temperatures assures me that there has been very significant warming over the past 15 years. Not to mention the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice. So, yes, it seems just as simple as I say.
The observation that would not fit the prediction would be little or no warming. The falsifiable hypothesis is that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes warming. There are literally hundreds of published scientific papers you can read about the topic. It's been a very active area of research for decades. I'll point you to just one short summary of the research results.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The causation is trivial. That's why global warming was predicted long before it was observed.
Yes, without any proposed mechanism of causality, a correlation is just a correlation and does not imply causality. But with CFCs and the ozone layer, there is a mechanism of causality. CFCs catalyze the reaction of ozone molecules breaking up into oxygen molecules.
I haven't seen anyone propose "world government" for the solution to global warming. The solution put forward has been for countries to agree to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will increase costs, but effects of global warming will increase costs, too. The debate is what amount of spending on reducing carbon dioxide emissions will minimize total costs.
How is climate change complicated? You increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, and the planet warms. That's about as complicated as you put a blanket over you and you keep warm. Both mechanisms decrease the heat radiated away. Over 100 years ago, Arrhenius gave estimates of global warming that closely match the latest observations. It's not complicated at all.
I have yet to see that Wikipedia. I go to the one with people collaborating on making articles better. Yes, occasionally a jerk comes along and tries to push a particular point of view, but they generally come to their senses quickly or just go away, often after being blocked from editing.