If they're prominent in the field, they'll have published papers describing their ideas. Link to those instead of using hearsay evidence.
I guess in your reasoning CO2 is going to behave completely different in the atmosphere despite both being gases and subject to the same dynamics.
I fail to see how a discrepancy in methane output invalidates the big-picture heat-trapping effect of both methane and CO2. It's on the level of "Hrm, that's interesting", not "Okay folks, back to the drawing board." I suspect the methane question might have something to do with our less-than-perfect knowledge of methane hydrates and their global distribution, but what do I know? I ain't no climate scientist.
Still, your argument is that because methane isn't acting exactly how we expect, our global warming models are useless. That argument is bunk.
The recent bill just out of the House doesn't do one single thing to address the 2 largest impacts to atmospheric heating promulgated by man: loss of forested areas due to subsistence ag and animal husbandry and thermoelectric radiation from urban areas.
Direct thermoelectric radiation isn't a big factor in the climate --- the amplified effect of heat-trapping gases is far more significant. But I'm with you on the forests. We can't do much about the forest issue domestically, however, and limiting CO2 emissions will also help. It's not as if we can't encourage forest growth and limit emissions.
increase all supplies of energy at economical prices while being far cheaper to implement remediating solutions
I share your concern. Nuclear power is green power, and too few people realize that. Nuclear power has zero emissions aside from negligible mining inputs, and the technology is available today. It can use our existing distribution infrastructure. Not building more nuclear plants is foolhardy.
Voting must be anonymous and private. If you allow online voting, then nothing prevents someone from standing over your shoulder and paying you $50 to vote the way he wants. Yes, absentee ballots have the same problem, which is why I think Oregon's all-mail voting system is terribly dangerous. This vulnerability isn't theoretical: the scenario I describe actually happened throughout the 19th century and led to some very crooked elections. It's why we switched to a secret ballot in the 1880s. Let's not forget our history here.
I suspect we may be forced, after all, to implement the kind of solution you describe. That's unfortunate, though, since its effects are less predictable than removing the deleterious CO2 input to begin with.
So let me get this straight: you accept that global warming is real and anthropogenic, but don't think it's worth spending money to combat because its effects can be mitigated with advanced technology? I understand the desire for a cost-benefit analysis, but it's clear that the cost of emission limits are far lower than the opportunity cost (that is, letting global warming happen.)
Much of the world's population lives on land that will be flooded by the sea level increase caused by unrestrained global warming. When sea levels rise, you'll have to either move those people or build large systems of dikes, both of which are very expensive propositions. Plus, you need to account for: the loss of arable land; the loss of significant cultural centers; the desertification of inland agricultural areas like the Russian Steppes and the American Midwest; and the economic toll of the inevitable war over scarcer resources. Granted, I don't have numbers for these factors handy. But I'd bet good money that mitigating these problems later will cost more than capping emissions now.
Yes, we may develop technology that makes these things cheap. But we might develop technology that makes emission reduction cheap, too. It doesn't matter: we can't count on fanciful technology we don't have today.
My problems aren't with if global warming exists or not but rather if we should paralyze the economy to do so
The Kyoto agreement hasn't "paralyzed" the economy of the nations that have adopted it. Why do you suppose our cap-and-trade system would paralyze our own?
Similarly, on "quality of life" just look at the suicide rates
What makes you think suicide rates are a good proxy for quality of life? If anything, in a developed country, you know your survivors will still be able to lead a good life. In a poor nation, someone suicidal might not do the deed because he needs to work as hard as possible for his family to survive. I also suspect there are religious factors in play here.
I am only in favor of taxes that the government actually deserves for some reason
"Deserves?" Why are you unnecessarily introducing loaded, morality-impregnated words like that? The relevant question isn't "does the government deserve this revenue?", but rather, "will this tax policy have the effect intended, and is this effect beneficial?"
However, there is little government incentive compared to electrical cars or hydrogen powered ones.
I agree. The problem is that gasoline is far too cheap. In Europe, where gasoline is taxed to capture the full cost of obtaining it, cars are far more efficient. CAFE standards and electric car subsidies are better than nothing, but I'd prefer to see an appropriate price for gasoline and a tax credit to make the effect less painful for lower-income households.
In 2011 someone might discover a process in which carbon can be leached out of the atmosphere and put into blocks
That's funny. We already have machines that do that. Animals create shells out of calcium carbonate. When they die, these shells sink to the ocean floor and become limestone sediment, effectively taking carbon out of the atmosphere. They literally leech carbon out of the atmosphere (via the oceans) and turn it into blocks.
We are killing these creatures by slowly making our oceans more acidic. This killing has a cost. Costs like these are not reflected in a naive market model.
How many more years of C02/temperature divergence will it get you to question your blind faith?
I have two conditions: 1) show me a correlation between solar activity and temperature that's stronger than the correlation between CO2 and temperature, and 2) propose a plausible theory of why past temperature correlates so closely with CO2 excursions, but why this CO2 excursion won't in turn cause a large temperature excursion. That is, show me that CO2 doesn't have a causal relationship to temperature, or that it does, but not for this cycle. Due to the strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, that would require you to show that CO2 is instead increased by temperature, or that CO2 and temperature increases have typically had a common cause.
Just to warn you: it'll be hard to show that CO2 increases don't cause temperature changes: the physics of the CO2's heat-trapping effects and the feedback effect of increased water vapor are well-understood. Granted, I'm not a climate scientist, but just an informed observer. But I'll still need to see some credible evidence. Given that, however, I'll start to think "By George, maybe they're onto something!"
Remember Compuserve, early AOL, and Prodigy? I do. If the government hadn't funded the creation of the Internet, we'd have been stuck with a set of parochial, corporate networks. It would cost thousands to set up the equivalent of a website, with many services having per-hour charges. (This actually happened.) Email would work like text messaging: you would receive a set number per month, with each additional message costing some exorbitant amount. Inter-service email would cost extra. DRM would be ubiquitous. All forums would be moderated for "family" content. (This actually happened.) There would be only one official client for each network, and without competition, these clients would be invariable buggy and limited. (This actually happened.) The world I'm describing is Dick Cheney's dream.
For all its problems, I'd take today's Internet over that world any day. Government in this instance has truly been a force for good in the world.
I shouldn't feed the troll, but I feel compelled to respond to one of yours points:
After being stable for quite a few years, levels jumped up.6% uniformly around the globe in opposition to what global warming models say it should do instead of increasing in the northern hemisphere then gradually rising in the south.
This is practically the same argument that Intelligent Design advocates use to dismiss evolution. It's a logical fallacy:
A model for X predicts Y, but we don't see Y. Therefore, my claim Z, which makes no predictions, must be true.
That's clearly nonsense. It's like claiming Newton's equations should be trashed because they don't exactly predict Mercury's orbit.
Our climactic models will never be perfect in every detail, but they do correctly capture large-scale variations. Discrepancies are not problems, but rather learning opportunities that give us a chance to refine our models. If you have a better model, then please, send it to Science or Nature for publication: it'll be the best thing you'll ever do for your career.
Otherwise, please stop claiming that small deficiencies in the model discredit its large-scale predictions.
The market does crazy things when life is on the line. That's why disaster profiteering is illegal. That's why we have a fucked-up healthcare system, actually: "being alive" is a pretty strange good from an economic point of view. Demand for "being alive" is very high and very inelastic. You can increase the price of "being alive" as much as you want, and people will keep paying that price as long as they have money. That's practically a recipe for misery.
My point is that the creator of the OP's graph cherry-picked a period during which temperatures happened to decline, and that it's no different from my doing the same thing with a different cherry-picked period. If you look at recorded temperatures and ice-core results, you'll find that the runup since the beginning of the industrial revolution is like nothing we've been since the Eocene Thermal Maximum.
If the global warming advocates couldn't get the next 10 years right when they made their predictions in 1999, why are we still pretending that they can get the next 100 years right? If 10 years is "just weather", then so is 100!
I can't predict the weather over the next ten days, but I have a pretty good idea of what it'll be like over the next ten months. If you're trotting out this argument, you have no idea what a "chaotic system", and have no business commenting on climate science.
Or bribery, graft, patronage, embezzlement, nepotism, cronyism and kickbacks. Clearly government is about much more than simple politics.
What's your point? Yes, these things happen in government, as they do in any other institution. It's preposterous, however, to think that because of these things, government isn't worth the trouble.
Your argument that technology evolves is a red herring, and is irrelevant to the original point. Also, you never answered my question: In principle, what evidence would convince you that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and dangerous?
We know from past experiences that government mandated controls on the free economy lead to ruin.
You'll need to support that with evidence, because from where I'm sitting, the places in the world with well-regulated market economies (Western Europe, Australia, Europe, Japan) are among the best places on earth to live, and measure better on virtually every quality-of-life index than less-regulated places like China and the United States. I wouldn't quite call that "ruin".
government funding traps us in the mentality of looking for a "perfect" solution...so doable solutions that might not be 100% perfect get ignored because you get less funding from them.
I don't see how this "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" factor applies in this situation. The cap-and-trade system of limiting carbon emissions is a system that works. I don't see what more-expedient-but-still-good solution is being held back by it.
Also, government funding doesn't "trap us" into looking for perfect solutions while ignoring good ones. You'll have to back that up with evidence.
The free market will always have a solution to the problem.
First of all, I agree with this statement. A free and efficient market is mankind's best method for allocating resources.
The source of my disagreement with you lies in your implicit assumption that the market we have today is free and efficient. It is not, because it does not take into account the embedded costs of pollution in goods we produce. The whole point of the cap-and-trade system is to force the market to take into account these external costs and thereby become an even better allocator of resources.
if your trend line from January 2002 to May 2009 is not a decline of 0.26 degrees per decade like their violet line, what is it then and how did you arrive at it?
You're right, my friend. Consider the trendline from June of 2008 to January of 2009: if anything, global temperatures are plunging. At this rate, even the tropics will freeze in a few years. AGW is a farce: we have global cooling to worry about!
</snark>
The OP's point is that the graph's trendline is meaningless in context.
(Curve-fitting is probably the most abused practice in all of statistics: it's absolutely bonkers unless you know a priori (that is, before you see the data) what kind of curve you expect to see, and you fit against a reasonable sample of the data. If you choose incorrect parameters, you can show a curve that fits any cockamamie notion you come up with.)
You're right. I could actually have done even better and stopped after the subject line. I'd like to see anyone who believes that "the sole purpose of government is politics" try to do without police, fire departments, an educated population, the common defense, lifesaving NIH research, the Internet itself, roads, and clean water.
Your skepticism would have been laudable in 1960, but today, it's just a hindrance. The scientific community has studied the problem for almost 50 years, and except for the unavoidable lunatic fringe, has reached a strong and emphatic consensus on a solution.
What more do you want? What fact would, if presented, convince you that anthropogenic global warming is a real danger?
there still is no way to interpret the 2002-present data as anything but a sustained downward trend
Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.
Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend.
Of course this story will bring all the conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork. They will argue that global warming really doesn't exist, or that it's not anthropogenic, and other such things. It makes them feel great to imagine they can see something which the larger scientific community is clearly missing. They can feel like heroes.
Well, sorry to dash your hopes, climate-change deniers, but this report is akin to a convicted criminal filing appeal after appeal after appeal, not to bring up some point of fact or law, but simply to clog the system and delay his sentence. After a certain mass of evidence has accumulated, you've got to find something extraordinary to reverse the judgment. Appeals eventually end.
As the old saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Considering the vast body of reviewed and verified climate change literature, and considering this paper's lack of relevant extraordinary evidence, quashing the report was certainly the right thing to do. It would eventually be rebuffed anyway, but doing so would divert resources from valuable endeavors and provide the not-so-loyal opposition with ammunition to delay climate change in the legislature. We've studied the problem enough: now it's time to say "enough is enough" and work on solutions.
runningisthe river past the begorrahbastards that wake o Finnegan (Irish innished thirtyfourthirtytwo), truly a myopic spectacle! Written in pictures or cats, perhaps both - femalines?
Tout ceci et toi avez employé dans le développement de l'ancien n'avez pas pu rester seulement dans les pages du réseau !. Pour (tajenaiiiiiscmm) celui, et dans une certaine mesure le reste de l'organisation de cette information, vous trouverez la plupart des ressources existantes dans le domaine de la gestion et du travail, ou êtes responsable de l'information qu'elles prévoient pour s'employer.
Alas; fine Finnegan's fate, making dry desert and rashy the thorred worlds and parsons thereof, though its poorness caused by poverty - redundadant? - of undry dessert and mmm (the pfilomunscenrtoolffloddoiolcomeyuloasdertenterytoumnckkawqwaweraoopfmrisndiurt!) rashy again and it is all God's feckin' fault. Plumghust. Mufflewhump. Urrrrgh. Adamand A man on the Eve of the running is the -
Chicago infamously addressed an automobile tax disparity by forcing suburban car dealerships to collect City taxes. City dwellers could no longer escape the inordinate tax by buying in the suburbs
The real problem is that large cities in this country are no longer able to annex their suburbs. The consequent municipal fragmentation leads to a rash of problems ranging from fiscal inefficiency (because there are too many governments) to uncoordinated transit planning to terrible city schools. If cities were again allowed to naturally encompass entire metropolitan areas, we'd see fewer screwy laws and a greater focus on the common good.
Almost all the problems of large cities can be traced to the "I've got mine, so you can screw yourself" mentality of the nearby suburbs. It's not the sprawl itself that's the problem, but the perverse economic incentives that a fragmented regional government creates. Fix that problem, and we can have larger, healthier, and more sustainable cities.
A false dichotomy is an old debating trick where one party says, "well, you oppose X, and therefore you must be for Y!" It's called "false" because the world really doesn't work that way. There are many different options.
You are employing a false dichotomy here. Opposition to the current copyright regime is not synonymous with the abolition of copyright. Many of us, instead, feel that copyright needs to be reformed, not abolished:
Limit copyright to reasonable terms and re-establish the tradition of a rich public domain. Copyrights last live longer than most people do constitute a fencing-in of our common culture and do not stimulate creativity, and in fact subvert the original social contract governing copyright.
Legalize non-commercial distribution of audiovisual works. It is unreasonable to ban a practice that the population overwhelmingly favors in order to enrich a few industry moguls. Banning noncommercial reproduction of these works does little to engender creativity and much to create animosity between the content industry and the consumer, which leads to the pathetic sight of an association of dying companies suing its own customers. Artists like Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead have demonstrated that the patronage model works well for music. Despite record levels of film piracy, both the quality and revenue in the film industry are near their historic peaks. Legalizing non-commercial sharing would merely acknowledge a right the public has already asserted. Morality should influence law, not vice versa.
Repeal draconian enforcement laws. Bringing a camera anywhere, much less a movie theater, should not be a criminal offense, much less a felony. Copyright infringement is an economic crime and should have economic penalties.
Copyrights should require periodic renewal. It is appalling that a works can be kept out of public sight for the better part of a century on the faint hope that a corporation might someday squeeze a little more juice from the turnip. Idle, unexploited works belong in the public domain: the current owners have demonstrated in inability to further develop these works, and the public deserves a chance. A periodic copyright renewal fee would ensure that only works that merit the full term of copyright retain it.
These changes will maintain the spirit and essential utility of copyright law while curbing the abuses of the past half-century. Reform will restore copyright to the status of a fair social contract that rewards creativity without smothering it.
believe cell tower microwaves are similarly non-water exciting, but technicians do NOT stand in front of live ones for fear of losing the ability to reproduce.
"All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison...."
Paracelsus had no way of anticipating photons, but they act the same way. Regular old light is harmful if sufficient concentration, and gamma rays are harmless at low enough ones. (Which is why we're not building shields against gamma ray bursts.)
In large part, yes! Consider all the people who opposed wind power for decades because of the potential damage to bird populations, or people who want to tear down all our (zero-emission, mind you) hydroelectric dams, or people who oppose the ultimate in emission-free power, nuclear. If it hadn't been for the Luddites, we'd have a lot more widespread clean energy sources today.
Not all environmentalists are Luddites, of course, but there seems to be a very strong correlation.
Reasonable people: Let's use this wonderful new technology! Environmentalists: No way! It's dangerous! Reasonable people: Err, no it's not. The technology is based on well-understood principles we've been using for decades. Environmentalists: But how do you know that this particular combination of principles won't cause some damage! You have to prove it. Do you have any evidence that this technology doesn't hurt anything? Reasonable people: Okay, we'll humor you. Let's run an experiment. Environmentalists: No testing! We don't know whether this technology is safe! You might hurt someone or something!
Come on. You should know better. We know what microwaves do at the energy densities indicated. We have absolutely no reason to believe they might cause wide-scale changes to ecosystems. The burden of proof is on you to show that there is actually a harmful effect.
Slashdot Mirror
If they're prominent in the field, they'll have published papers describing their ideas. Link to those instead of using hearsay evidence.
I fail to see how a discrepancy in methane output invalidates the big-picture heat-trapping effect of both methane and CO2. It's on the level of "Hrm, that's interesting", not "Okay folks, back to the drawing board." I suspect the methane question might have something to do with our less-than-perfect knowledge of methane hydrates and their global distribution, but what do I know? I ain't no climate scientist.
Still, your argument is that because methane isn't acting exactly how we expect, our global warming models are useless. That argument is bunk.
Direct thermoelectric radiation isn't a big factor in the climate --- the amplified effect of heat-trapping gases is far more significant. But I'm with you on the forests. We can't do much about the forest issue domestically, however, and limiting CO2 emissions will also help. It's not as if we can't encourage forest growth and limit emissions.
I share your concern. Nuclear power is green power, and too few people realize that. Nuclear power has zero emissions aside from negligible mining inputs, and the technology is available today. It can use our existing distribution infrastructure. Not building more nuclear plants is foolhardy.
Voting must be anonymous and private. If you allow online voting, then nothing prevents someone from standing over your shoulder and paying you $50 to vote the way he wants. Yes, absentee ballots have the same problem, which is why I think Oregon's all-mail voting system is terribly dangerous. This vulnerability isn't theoretical: the scenario I describe actually happened throughout the 19th century and led to some very crooked elections. It's why we switched to a secret ballot in the 1880s. Let's not forget our history here.
I suspect we may be forced, after all, to implement the kind of solution you describe. That's unfortunate, though, since its effects are less predictable than removing the deleterious CO2 input to begin with.
So let me get this straight: you accept that global warming is real and anthropogenic, but don't think it's worth spending money to combat because its effects can be mitigated with advanced technology? I understand the desire for a cost-benefit analysis, but it's clear that the cost of emission limits are far lower than the opportunity cost (that is, letting global warming happen.)
Much of the world's population lives on land that will be flooded by the sea level increase caused by unrestrained global warming. When sea levels rise, you'll have to either move those people or build large systems of dikes, both of which are very expensive propositions. Plus, you need to account for: the loss of arable land; the loss of significant cultural centers; the desertification of inland agricultural areas like the Russian Steppes and the American Midwest; and the economic toll of the inevitable war over scarcer resources. Granted, I don't have numbers for these factors handy. But I'd bet good money that mitigating these problems later will cost more than capping emissions now.
Yes, we may develop technology that makes these things cheap. But we might develop technology that makes emission reduction cheap, too. It doesn't matter: we can't count on fanciful technology we don't have today.
The Kyoto agreement hasn't "paralyzed" the economy of the nations that have adopted it. Why do you suppose our cap-and-trade system would paralyze our own?
What makes you think suicide rates are a good proxy for quality of life? If anything, in a developed country, you know your survivors will still be able to lead a good life. In a poor nation, someone suicidal might not do the deed because he needs to work as hard as possible for his family to survive. I also suspect there are religious factors in play here.
"Deserves?" Why are you unnecessarily introducing loaded, morality-impregnated words like that? The relevant question isn't "does the government deserve this revenue?", but rather, "will this tax policy have the effect intended, and is this effect beneficial?"
I agree. The problem is that gasoline is far too cheap. In Europe, where gasoline is taxed to capture the full cost of obtaining it, cars are far more efficient. CAFE standards and electric car subsidies are better than nothing, but I'd prefer to see an appropriate price for gasoline and a tax credit to make the effect less painful for lower-income households.
That's funny. We already have machines that do that. Animals create shells out of calcium carbonate. When they die, these shells sink to the ocean floor and become limestone sediment, effectively taking carbon out of the atmosphere. They literally leech carbon out of the atmosphere (via the oceans) and turn it into blocks.
We are killing these creatures by slowly making our oceans more acidic. This killing has a cost. Costs like these are not reflected in a naive market model.
I have two conditions: 1) show me a correlation between solar activity and temperature that's stronger than the correlation between CO2 and temperature, and 2) propose a plausible theory of why past temperature correlates so closely with CO2 excursions, but why this CO2 excursion won't in turn cause a large temperature excursion. That is, show me that CO2 doesn't have a causal relationship to temperature, or that it does, but not for this cycle. Due to the strong correlation between CO2 and temperature, that would require you to show that CO2 is instead increased by temperature, or that CO2 and temperature increases have typically had a common cause.
Just to warn you: it'll be hard to show that CO2 increases don't cause temperature changes: the physics of the CO2's heat-trapping effects and the feedback effect of increased water vapor are well-understood. Granted, I'm not a climate scientist, but just an informed observer. But I'll still need to see some credible evidence. Given that, however, I'll start to think "By George, maybe they're onto something!"
Remember Compuserve, early AOL, and Prodigy? I do. If the government hadn't funded the creation of the Internet, we'd have been stuck with a set of parochial, corporate networks. It would cost thousands to set up the equivalent of a website, with many services having per-hour charges. (This actually happened.) Email would work like text messaging: you would receive a set number per month, with each additional message costing some exorbitant amount. Inter-service email would cost extra. DRM would be ubiquitous. All forums would be moderated for "family" content. (This actually happened.) There would be only one official client for each network, and without competition, these clients would be invariable buggy and limited. (This actually happened.) The world I'm describing is Dick Cheney's dream.
For all its problems, I'd take today's Internet over that world any day. Government in this instance has truly been a force for good in the world.
I shouldn't feed the troll, but I feel compelled to respond to one of yours points:
This is practically the same argument that Intelligent Design advocates use to dismiss evolution. It's a logical fallacy:
A model for X predicts Y, but we don't see Y. Therefore, my claim Z, which makes no predictions, must be true.
That's clearly nonsense. It's like claiming Newton's equations should be trashed because they don't exactly predict Mercury's orbit.
Our climactic models will never be perfect in every detail, but they do correctly capture large-scale variations. Discrepancies are not problems, but rather learning opportunities that give us a chance to refine our models. If you have a better model, then please, send it to Science or Nature for publication: it'll be the best thing you'll ever do for your career.
Otherwise, please stop claiming that small deficiencies in the model discredit its large-scale predictions.
The market does crazy things when life is on the line. That's why disaster profiteering is illegal. That's why we have a fucked-up healthcare system, actually: "being alive" is a pretty strange good from an economic point of view. Demand for "being alive" is very high and very inelastic. You can increase the price of "being alive" as much as you want, and people will keep paying that price as long as they have money. That's practically a recipe for misery.
My point is that the creator of the OP's graph cherry-picked a period during which temperatures happened to decline, and that it's no different from my doing the same thing with a different cherry-picked period. If you look at recorded temperatures and ice-core results, you'll find that the runup since the beginning of the industrial revolution is like nothing we've been since the Eocene Thermal Maximum.
I can't predict the weather over the next ten days, but I have a pretty good idea of what it'll be like over the next ten months. If you're trotting out this argument, you have no idea what a "chaotic system", and have no business commenting on climate science.
Like this one? Or this one? Or even this one?
What's your point? Yes, these things happen in government, as they do in any other institution. It's preposterous, however, to think that because of these things, government isn't worth the trouble.
Your argument that technology evolves is a red herring, and is irrelevant to the original point. Also, you never answered my question: In principle, what evidence would convince you that global warming is real, anthropogenic, and dangerous?
You'll need to support that with evidence, because from where I'm sitting, the places in the world with well-regulated market economies (Western Europe, Australia, Europe, Japan) are among the best places on earth to live, and measure better on virtually every quality-of-life index than less-regulated places like China and the United States. I wouldn't quite call that "ruin".
I don't see how this "don't let perfect be the enemy of good" factor applies in this situation. The cap-and-trade system of limiting carbon emissions is a system that works. I don't see what more-expedient-but-still-good solution is being held back by it.
Also, government funding doesn't "trap us" into looking for perfect solutions while ignoring good ones. You'll have to back that up with evidence.
First of all, I agree with this statement. A free and efficient market is mankind's best method for allocating resources.
The source of my disagreement with you lies in your implicit assumption that the market we have today is free and efficient. It is not, because it does not take into account the embedded costs of pollution in goods we produce. The whole point of the cap-and-trade system is to force the market to take into account these external costs and thereby become an even better allocator of resources.
You're right, my friend. Consider the trendline from June of 2008 to January of 2009: if anything, global temperatures are plunging. At this rate, even the tropics will freeze in a few years. AGW is a farce: we have global cooling to worry about!
</snark>
The OP's point is that the graph's trendline is meaningless in context.
(Curve-fitting is probably the most abused practice in all of statistics: it's absolutely bonkers unless you know a priori (that is, before you see the data) what kind of curve you expect to see, and you fit against a reasonable sample of the data. If you choose incorrect parameters, you can show a curve that fits any cockamamie notion you come up with.)
You're right. I could actually have done even better and stopped after the subject line. I'd like to see anyone who believes that "the sole purpose of government is politics" try to do without police, fire departments, an educated population, the common defense, lifesaving NIH research, the Internet itself, roads, and clean water.
Thank you! Posts like yours make it worthwhile to hold my nose and deal with the sophomoric ignorance of most posters on Slashdot.
Your skepticism would have been laudable in 1960, but today, it's just a hindrance. The scientific community has studied the problem for almost 50 years, and except for the unavoidable lunatic fringe, has reached a strong and emphatic consensus on a solution.
What more do you want? What fact would, if presented, convince you that anthropogenic global warming is a real danger?
Actually, it just looks like a brief downward excursion in a larger chaotic trend. We see exactly the same behavior in another chaotic system, the stock marker: even in a a bull market (good times), one finds downward trends.
Changes in temperature on this scale are exactly what you would expect to find, actually, in the context of an overall, long-term warming trend.
The verbal economy of your post is truly beautiful. Thank you. After only four words, I was assured I would find nothing of value there.
Of course this story will bring all the conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork. They will argue that global warming really doesn't exist, or that it's not anthropogenic, and other such things. It makes them feel great to imagine they can see something which the larger scientific community is clearly missing. They can feel like heroes.
Well, sorry to dash your hopes, climate-change deniers, but this report is akin to a convicted criminal filing appeal after appeal after appeal, not to bring up some point of fact or law, but simply to clog the system and delay his sentence. After a certain mass of evidence has accumulated, you've got to find something extraordinary to reverse the judgment. Appeals eventually end.
As the old saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Considering the vast body of reviewed and verified climate change literature, and considering this paper's lack of relevant extraordinary evidence, quashing the report was certainly the right thing to do. It would eventually be rebuffed anyway, but doing so would divert resources from valuable endeavors and provide the not-so-loyal opposition with ammunition to delay climate change in the legislature. We've studied the problem enough: now it's time to say "enough is enough" and work on solutions.
Uncyclopedia has a brilliant summary of Finnegan's Wake:
The real problem is that large cities in this country are no longer able to annex their suburbs. The consequent municipal fragmentation leads to a rash of problems ranging from fiscal inefficiency (because there are too many governments) to uncoordinated transit planning to terrible city schools. If cities were again allowed to naturally encompass entire metropolitan areas, we'd see fewer screwy laws and a greater focus on the common good.
Almost all the problems of large cities can be traced to the "I've got mine, so you can screw yourself" mentality of the nearby suburbs. It's not the sprawl itself that's the problem, but the perverse economic incentives that a fragmented regional government creates. Fix that problem, and we can have larger, healthier, and more sustainable cities.
A false dichotomy is an old debating trick where one party says, "well, you oppose X, and therefore you must be for Y!" It's called "false" because the world really doesn't work that way. There are many different options.
You are employing a false dichotomy here. Opposition to the current copyright regime is not synonymous with the abolition of copyright. Many of us, instead, feel that copyright needs to be reformed, not abolished:
These changes will maintain the spirit and essential utility of copyright law while curbing the abuses of the past half-century. Reform will restore copyright to the status of a fair social contract that rewards creativity without smothering it.
"All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison...."
Paracelsus had no way of anticipating photons, but they act the same way. Regular old light is harmful if sufficient concentration, and gamma rays are harmless at low enough ones. (Which is why we're not building shields against gamma ray bursts.)
In large part, yes! Consider all the people who opposed wind power for decades because of the potential damage to bird populations, or people who want to tear down all our (zero-emission, mind you) hydroelectric dams, or people who oppose the ultimate in emission-free power, nuclear. If it hadn't been for the Luddites, we'd have a lot more widespread clean energy sources today.
Not all environmentalists are Luddites, of course, but there seems to be a very strong correlation.
Ah, environmentalists:
Reasonable people: Let's use this wonderful new technology!
Environmentalists: No way! It's dangerous!
Reasonable people: Err, no it's not. The technology is based on well-understood principles we've been using for decades.
Environmentalists: But how do you know that this particular combination of principles won't cause some damage! You have to prove it. Do you have any evidence that this technology doesn't hurt anything?
Reasonable people: Okay, we'll humor you. Let's run an experiment.
Environmentalists: No testing! We don't know whether this technology is safe! You might hurt someone or something!
Come on. You should know better. We know what microwaves do at the energy densities indicated. We have absolutely no reason to believe they might cause wide-scale changes to ecosystems. The burden of proof is on you to show that there is actually a harmful effect.