My point exactly! We cannot prove the theory of relativity. We can only make observations and see if they agree with the theory. We can never test all possible speeds, so we will never know for sure that Newton's laws are incorrect for all speeds.
The testable time frame is the entire span of life on Earth. We have the entire fossil record to examine, as well as being able to test the genetic differences from species that diverged hundreds of millions of years ago. Evolution explains all the available evidence. Just think of it -- a theory that was developed before we understood genetics successfully predicts the amount of genetic differences between species! It's a remarkably accurate theory.
The point of science is to make hypotheses that make testable predictions. By having a hypothesis of how planets formed, we can predict the composition of our planet and other planets. By having a hypothesis of how species diverged, we can predict what fossils will be found in which places and what the genetic differences between organisms will be.
What makes the history of ancient Egypt somewhat different is that studying it does not necessarily give testable predictions for what will happen in other cultures. You might study the culture of Egypt thousands of years ago as part of an anthropology class, but that would be different from a class about the history of ancient Egypt.
Teaching evolution as only the idea of how species diverged without giving concrete examples of how species diverged on Earth would be as useless as teaching plate tectonics without covering what the Earth's plates have done in the past, or teaching astronomy without covering how the universe has expanded and how galaxies merge, or teaching anthropology without learning about past cultures.
You never prove claims in science. You can only make an observation that confirms a hypothesis. That doesn't prove that the hypothesis is correct for at least two reasons. First, your measurements are precise only to a particular amount of precision, so you can never demonstrate that the hypothesis gives exactly correct results. Second, you can never make measurements in every conceivable set of circumstances. There may exist a set of circumstances under which the hypothesis is incorrect, such as how Netwon's laws are incorrect near the speed of light.
It's similar to the conundrum that you can never prove a program correct by testing. You can only demonstrate bugs by testing.
It could be that more of the vulnerabilities are being found in open source browsers than in closed source browsers. In other words, closed source browsers may have many more undiscovered security problems. IE still has security vulnerabilities they're not fixing, both ones that are publicly known and ones that only Microsoft and a few others know about. Chrome and Firefox have no publicly known security vulnerabilities today.
Google is saying that some companies *cough* Microsoft *cough* sit on security bugs for years until they're finally exploited, putting their users at risk. It's only by publicly disclosing the bug that these companies fix the problem.
If sea level rises by three feet, it will wipe out the current beachfront of Miami. Rising sea level isn't just an inconvenience, even in the U.S. We'll need to spend trillions of dollars to stop the incoming sea or move infrastructure inland. It's not a matter of a Miami millionaire moving his yacht pier up three feet. All his beachfront property will be a loss.
Sarah Palin has said that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will destroy the economy. So, yes, this is what the denialists claim. To me, this is the actual alarmism, as opposed to the calm, rational explanation of the effects of global warming such as that we'll see a meter of sea level rise this century. These same denialists say that people who believe in AGW claim that global warming is a threat to the planet, or at least an end to human civilization. In their minds, everything is all switched around, and stating the facts of the matter simply reinforces their misinformed opinion even more. No doubt I'll be modded as a troll by these people, though.
If I wanted to show that the conclusion of an oil company was incorrect, I would not rely on showing that their judgment can't be trusted. I would should evidence that they were wrong. If you think climatology is bad science, show evidence that the conclusions are wrong. You are using rhetorical debate in place of scientific reasoning.
Yes, that states that the warming due to soot is as much or maybe more than that due to warming. It also applies only to Himalayan glaciers, not the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland ice sheets, which is the melting we are most concerned about.
That says that there's an impact due to soot, but not that the impact is more than that due to warming. It also applies only to Himalayan glaciers, not to glaciers, snow, and ice in general.
I'm sorry... I've been following this very closely and have never seen the study you just linked to. Note that although it says that most melting is due to soot, it applies only to Himalayan glaciers, and not to all glaciers, snow, and ice as arivanov stated. The melting in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland (that is, most of the melting ice) seems to be due mostly to warming.
No, no data that did not fit global warming was left out. There was nothing misleading or unethical about what the researchers did. If you think you have evidence that AGW is not happening, please show it.
No one is proposing that we change our lifestyle by dumping our computers, our cars, our TVs, our telephones. The plan is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. This will be done by improving energy efficiency, developing nuclear power more, and increasing energy from renewable sources. No one has said we need to get all energy from renewable sources or stop burning all fossil fuels altogether. Nice strawman!
But all the articles say that temperature is influencing the melting more than the soot, and I don't see anyone pointing out a third contributing factor. I'm not ignoring the statement that the soot has contributed significantly to the retreat. I'm sure it does. But there's no statement anywhere that says the soot is causing more melting than warming. I'm still looking...
Let's just say for argument's sake that the climatologists at CRU are all actively engaged in deliberate fraud. How does that negate what all the other hundreds of climatologists are doing? Scientific frauds are uncovered all the time, and I never see anyone claiming that a handful of bad researchers invalidates the entire field they're studying. If you think there's something wrong with the science showing that humans are responsible for most of the warming of the past fifty years, you're going to have to come up with evidence if you want to convince anyone else.
The first source states Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world's largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the second source states The stuff that builds up in your chimney is soiling the ice of the Arctic, possibly hastening the melting of the polar ice cap, a new study suggests. Again, neither says that most melting is due to soot or dust. In fact, they seem to say that most melting is due to warming.
Investigations have found that the "trick" in question was a statistical technique, not a deception. The endorsements of those scientific organizations is the result of hundreds of papers written by hundreds of climatologists. It's not a deception, and if you claim that it is, you'll need some really good evidence to back up your claim, not just a hacked email with the word "trick" in it.
That story, Black Soot May Speed Himalayan Glacier Melt states that
Researchers believe that high levels of soot over the vast plains to the south and west of the Himalayas may be speeding the melting of glaciers in two ways.
I do not doubt that soot may be causing glaciers to melt faster than they otherwise would. Where does someone say that ice melt is due mostly to dust and soot? If you notice, those two statements are very different!
This conclusion is endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences, The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and its parent organization, the American Institute of Physics, the national science academies of the G8 nations, Brazil, China, and India. and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ah, the famous moving goalposts. Yes, IE6 had good support for CSS, as does IE8 today. But IE's support for many other standards, in both IE6 and IE8, was and is sorely lacking.
IE6 wasn't very good even right when it came out. At the time, Mozilla was at version 0.9.x and had far better standards support. Remember the issue with alpha transparency in PNGs, for example? Or not handling documents served with Content-Type application/xhtml+xml properly?
The difference was that Netscape 4 (virtually no CSS support) and Opera 6 (no dynamic reflow) sucked even worse than IE6. Even Mozilla 0.9.x had quite a few problems. Today, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera are all strong browsers, so IE looks even worse in comparison.
Slashdot Mirror
My point exactly! We cannot prove the theory of relativity. We can only make observations and see if they agree with the theory. We can never test all possible speeds, so we will never know for sure that Newton's laws are incorrect for all speeds.
The testable time frame is the entire span of life on Earth. We have the entire fossil record to examine, as well as being able to test the genetic differences from species that diverged hundreds of millions of years ago. Evolution explains all the available evidence. Just think of it -- a theory that was developed before we understood genetics successfully predicts the amount of genetic differences between species! It's a remarkably accurate theory.
The point of science is to make hypotheses that make testable predictions. By having a hypothesis of how planets formed, we can predict the composition of our planet and other planets. By having a hypothesis of how species diverged, we can predict what fossils will be found in which places and what the genetic differences between organisms will be.
What makes the history of ancient Egypt somewhat different is that studying it does not necessarily give testable predictions for what will happen in other cultures. You might study the culture of Egypt thousands of years ago as part of an anthropology class, but that would be different from a class about the history of ancient Egypt.
Teaching evolution as only the idea of how species diverged without giving concrete examples of how species diverged on Earth would be as useless as teaching plate tectonics without covering what the Earth's plates have done in the past, or teaching astronomy without covering how the universe has expanded and how galaxies merge, or teaching anthropology without learning about past cultures.
You never prove claims in science. You can only make an observation that confirms a hypothesis. That doesn't prove that the hypothesis is correct for at least two reasons. First, your measurements are precise only to a particular amount of precision, so you can never demonstrate that the hypothesis gives exactly correct results. Second, you can never make measurements in every conceivable set of circumstances. There may exist a set of circumstances under which the hypothesis is incorrect, such as how Netwon's laws are incorrect near the speed of light.
It's similar to the conundrum that you can never prove a program correct by testing. You can only demonstrate bugs by testing.
It could be that more of the vulnerabilities are being found in open source browsers than in closed source browsers. In other words, closed source browsers may have many more undiscovered security problems. IE still has security vulnerabilities they're not fixing, both ones that are publicly known and ones that only Microsoft and a few others know about. Chrome and Firefox have no publicly known security vulnerabilities today.
You've just given me flashbacks to my time in the total perspective vortex, you insensitive clod!
Google is saying that some companies *cough* Microsoft *cough* sit on security bugs for years until they're finally exploited, putting their users at risk. It's only by publicly disclosing the bug that these companies fix the problem.
If sea level rises by three feet, it will wipe out the current beachfront of Miami. Rising sea level isn't just an inconvenience, even in the U.S. We'll need to spend trillions of dollars to stop the incoming sea or move infrastructure inland. It's not a matter of a Miami millionaire moving his yacht pier up three feet. All his beachfront property will be a loss.
Sarah Palin has said that reducing carbon dioxide emissions will destroy the economy. So, yes, this is what the denialists claim. To me, this is the actual alarmism, as opposed to the calm, rational explanation of the effects of global warming such as that we'll see a meter of sea level rise this century. These same denialists say that people who believe in AGW claim that global warming is a threat to the planet, or at least an end to human civilization. In their minds, everything is all switched around, and stating the facts of the matter simply reinforces their misinformed opinion even more. No doubt I'll be modded as a troll by these people, though.
If I wanted to show that the conclusion of an oil company was incorrect, I would not rely on showing that their judgment can't be trusted. I would should evidence that they were wrong. If you think climatology is bad science, show evidence that the conclusions are wrong. You are using rhetorical debate in place of scientific reasoning.
Yes, that states that the warming due to soot is as much or maybe more than that due to warming. It also applies only to Himalayan glaciers, not the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland ice sheets, which is the melting we are most concerned about.
That says that there's an impact due to soot, but not that the impact is more than that due to warming. It also applies only to Himalayan glaciers, not to glaciers, snow, and ice in general.
I notice you're not coming up with evidence about the conclusion being wrong. But it's nice to try to distract me with your nitpicking. Good try!
I'm sorry... I've been following this very closely and have never seen the study you just linked to. Note that although it says that most melting is due to soot, it applies only to Himalayan glaciers, and not to all glaciers, snow, and ice as arivanov stated. The melting in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland (that is, most of the melting ice) seems to be due mostly to warming.
No, no data that did not fit global warming was left out. There was nothing misleading or unethical about what the researchers did. If you think you have evidence that AGW is not happening, please show it.
No one is proposing that we change our lifestyle by dumping our computers, our cars, our TVs, our telephones. The plan is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. This will be done by improving energy efficiency, developing nuclear power more, and increasing energy from renewable sources. No one has said we need to get all energy from renewable sources or stop burning all fossil fuels altogether. Nice strawman!
But all the articles say that temperature is influencing the melting more than the soot, and I don't see anyone pointing out a third contributing factor. I'm not ignoring the statement that the soot has contributed significantly to the retreat. I'm sure it does. But there's no statement anywhere that says the soot is causing more melting than warming. I'm still looking...
Let's just say for argument's sake that the climatologists at CRU are all actively engaged in deliberate fraud. How does that negate what all the other hundreds of climatologists are doing? Scientific frauds are uncovered all the time, and I never see anyone claiming that a handful of bad researchers invalidates the entire field they're studying. If you think there's something wrong with the science showing that humans are responsible for most of the warming of the past fifty years, you're going to have to come up with evidence if you want to convince anyone else.
The first source states Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world's largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the second source states The stuff that builds up in your chimney is soiling the ice of the Arctic, possibly hastening the melting of the polar ice cap, a new study suggests. Again, neither says that most melting is due to soot or dust. In fact, they seem to say that most melting is due to warming.
Investigations have found that the "trick" in question was a statistical technique, not a deception. The endorsements of those scientific organizations is the result of hundreds of papers written by hundreds of climatologists. It's not a deception, and if you claim that it is, you'll need some really good evidence to back up your claim, not just a hacked email with the word "trick" in it.
I do not doubt that soot may be causing glaciers to melt faster than they otherwise would. Where does someone say that ice melt is due mostly to dust and soot? If you notice, those two statements are very different!
I've never heard that ice melt is due mostly to dust and soot. Can you provide a source to back up your claim?
The phenomenon of warming caused by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to humans burning fossil fuels was predicted by Arrhenius over 100 years ago.
Ah, the famous moving goalposts. Yes, IE6 had good support for CSS, as does IE8 today. But IE's support for many other standards, in both IE6 and IE8, was and is sorely lacking.
IE6 wasn't very good even right when it came out. At the time, Mozilla was at version 0.9.x and had far better standards support. Remember the issue with alpha transparency in PNGs, for example? Or not handling documents served with Content-Type application/xhtml+xml properly?
The difference was that Netscape 4 (virtually no CSS support) and Opera 6 (no dynamic reflow) sucked even worse than IE6. Even Mozilla 0.9.x had quite a few problems. Today, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera are all strong browsers, so IE looks even worse in comparison.