If you think the body of scientific work regarding climate change is wrong, then write down your findings, get it peer-reviewed, and get it published.
Are you going to pay for my research costs? It'll be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. Else, no. I'm not doing that.
Now, if you want to debate neurophilosophy as it pertains to approaches in artificial intelligence, then there are a few topics I'm equipped for.
Which unfortunately are quite irrelevant to discussions of global warming.
Otherwise, maybe you should approach climate scientists to discuss climate science. That is, unless you're in the habit of going to your mechanic for legal advice, attorney for medical advice, and doctor to get your car fixed.
Then don't have an opinion on something you aren't knowledgeable about. It's not that hard.
Wait, you're "Dumb Scientist"? I guess after a documented year of this, you'll have to rename your blog, "Creepy Stalker". Well, at least you're not yet WOOFY GOOFY level of nuts.
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
In the link I provided, Jane Q. Public explained why he/she dropped the "radiative power in" term as being negligible. I found the argument sufficient.
Having read your blog a bit more, I think it's time you dial back on your obsessive stalking. Glancing over your Dumb Scientist link, I see that you linked to my Slashdot posts dozens of times without ever discussing this with me or having a coherent argument for why you did so.
I don't really mind, since it increases the visibility of the posts. I think they're good material and will weather the years well. But you're missing an opportunity for enlightening and/or entertainment.
Just two weeks later, it becomes clear that Iâ(TM)ve failed to communicate once again. The futility of these conversations is depressing and frustrating. Itâ(TM)s just not worth trying to clear up this apparent confusion of ~200 year instrumental aggregates with ~650,000 year ice core proxies like EPICA.
Update: Iâ(TM)ve failed to communicate again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Each "again" is a link to one of my posts over what appears to be a year period between 2013 and 2014. I can't tell if they're all climate related (I doubt a one of them has anything to do with 650k year ice cores), but I had fun reading through them. Since Slashdot works so poorly with Google search, I might have better luck searching for my global warming change-related posts via your blog than via Google. There's some good stuff in there. Maybe you ought to read through my stuff sometime.
As a final remark, I posted this on your website in 2011 and my opinion has not changed since except for the last paragraph (due to the current creepy stalker vibe).
Let me put it simply. I donâ(TM)t trust the current research. I donâ(TM)t trust your or my characterizations of the current research. I donâ(TM)t have the time to figure this out though my belief is that there is insufficient uncertainty in the predictions of future climate change.
I figure though that this will all settled down in a couple of decades. Weâ(TM)ll almost double the duration of satellite-based evidence (plus have a greater span of data collected) and global warming will be more pronounced by then. Further, the economics side will be better known. Weâ(TM)ll have a better idea of the future direction of fossil fuels since peak oil will probably happen by then with peak natural gas coming. Alternative technologies like solar cells (which appear to be declining in price per watt by about 50% per eight years) may obsolete some or most fossil fuel needs. Perhaps the problem will solve itself by then.
I thank you for this marvelous website though. You have been sincere, helpful, and knowledgeable. I will consider your words even though Iâ(TM)m obviously not very receptive at the moment.
That remains my position. A couple of decades of climate should be enough, if there's a near future problem. So far, it doesn't appear to indicate such a problem wih slow warming growth.
I disagree, of course. Scenario B is the one assuming a negative, namely, that people don't have a belief about the seriousness of global warming. That's pretty simple. While scenario A assumes existence of a particular, elaborate moral fascade. After all, there isn't exactly one way bad/stupid/irrational manifests, so why would a few billion peoples all manifest in more or less the same way?
I'll note right at the beginning that my opinions on the relative priority of climate change risk are backed at least by a large minority and perhaps even a slim majority of the world's population, contrary to your earlier assertion which you have conveniently forgotten about.
Every single influential paper to ever be published that concluded that there is no anthropocene it turned out was written by somebody paid to lie.
Anthropocene != global warming. A newspaper gives you a lot of evidence for the anthropocene (which is merely that humanity has an impact on the entire world) as well. Also, I see you don't bother to actually link to any such "single influential paper".
It's a matter of natural fact that is inconvenient for some people, so they've spent time trying to make it all not true.
A "natural fact" which you can't even bother to state. I'm assuming it's that humanity is causing catastrophic levels of global warming, but maybe you have something completely different in mind.
I don't have to justify anything to you, and I'm not talking about beliefs. This doesn't have anything to do with beliefs. You can't just believe hard enough and make reality as you want it to be. This isn't fairy land.
Again no evidence provided. Just an assertion about me based on nothing.
I'm trying really hard to be more polite to you than you deserve on this topic out of respect for this website and the other people on it.
No, you aren't. This condescending tripe is not "polite". And I see more fantasy libel about my "zealous" and/or "psychopath" nature.
Please. Every time the topic of climate change comes up, it's not an automatic invitation for you to recruit for your ignorant cause.
Again, no evidence. And to the contrary, if you post on Slashdot, you are indeed automatically inviting all sorts of discussion, including that which you disagree with.
Furthermore, if you want to learn about climate change then there are better sources than me. There is nothing but a migraine for me to gain by discussing this further with you. There is nothing for you to gain because I don't have the patience to do this. Some people out there do, and they can do more for you than I can. So, there's no point in discussing this.
You could always learn something about the subject rather than once again not presenting even a shred of evidence for your beliefs.
Nature is not beholden to what you want to be true. It's not beholden to what you think is economically necessary. It's not beholden to what you "believe". It is not beholden to what you think is politically convenient. It is not beholden to what some amoral sociopath was paid to repeat at you through your television. You're not a god, and you're not going to convince anybody.
What evidence makes you think this is actually the problem? I think what is most remarkable about your argument is the complete absence of scientific thought and rhetoric. Even the most delusional can make the same content-free argument. I could copy and paste it with a little strategic editing to fit the present topic and dump on anyone. It would be just as valid as it is now.
OTOH, I present evidence in argument to the claim that we should evaluate our present climate change before "diverting" carbon dioxide emissions. The first is the observation that majorities of the most populated countries on Earth are not with the program. Second, estimates of past climate are based on very tenuous linkage to the modern era and more or less accurate measurement of relevant climate parameters.
Third, we have a systematic bias in climate research and presentation of climate research towards exaggerating the effects of global warming. One obvious way that manifests is via the IPCC. It distills all climate research into a single opinion in the "Su
I guess you'll have to decide for yourself. This is the sort of thing I'm speaking of (my comment on it at bottom). I apologize for the vast length of the quotes, but it is useful because it demonstrates a consider amount of doubt about the "Hockey Stick", a very important climate change artifact of the few years around the Second and Third Assessment reports of the IPCC.
Case closed? Hardly. The CRU emails reveal internal doubts about this entire enterprise both before and after the hockey stick made its debut. In a 1996 email to a large number of scientists in the CRU circle, Tom Wigley, a top climatologist working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, cautioned: "I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their product." Mann and his colleagues made use of some of the CRU data, but some of the CRU scientists weren't comfortable with the way Mann represented it and also seemed to find Mann more than a bit insufferable.
CRU scientist Keith Briffa, whose work on tree rings in Siberia has been subject to its own controversies, emailed Edward Cook of Columbia University: "I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series," adding that he was tired of "the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage [Mann] has produced over the last few years... and (better say no more)."
Cook replied: "I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike's recon[struction], particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his letter. It would be too aggravating.... It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively."
In yet another revealing email, Cook told Briffa: "Of course [Bradley] and other members of the MBH [Mann, Bradley, Hughes] camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective, i.e. the cup is not only 'half-empty'; it is demonstrably 'broken'. I come more from the 'cup half-full' camp when it comes to the MWP, maybe yes, maybe no, but it is too early to say what it is."
In another email to Briffa, Cook complains about Bradley, too: "His air of papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times."
Even as the IPCC was picking up Mann's hockey stick with enthusiasm, Briffa sent Mann a note of caution about "the possibility of expressing an impression of more consensus than might actually exist. I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not 'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence worried me. IPCC is supposed to represent consensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence." Briffa had previously dissented from the hockey stick reconstruction in a 1999 email to Mann and Phil Jones: "I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago." Even Malcolm Hughes, one of the original hockey stick coauthors, privately expressed reservations about overreliance on their invention, writing to Cook, Mann and others in 2002:
All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the datasets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data. As Ed [Cook] wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of most of the published estimates, the problem of poor replication near the beginnin
The point here is no scientific organization should have to even remotely pander to such nonsense that has fuck-all to do with space exploration.
Welcome to the real world. There's no point to lecturing me on what scientific organizations should and shouldn't do. Pandering to such nonsense is a common burden on scientific organizations all over the world.
Even yawning costs taxpayer money.
NASA blows a lot more than yawning money on what it does inefficiently and ineffectively. For example, the SLS is in itself a complete waste. That's more than yawning money right there.
How about ignore altogether, and remove those who think otherwise.
Ok, who should be removed? I don't see anyone who actually believes Muslim outreach is that important. And this opens us up to a slippery slope where we fire everyone whose beliefs aren't entirely in line with the missions of the various organizations that they happen to be a part of. Just in NASA, we have a bunch of people in the unmanned space program who would have beliefs in conflict with NASA's manned space activities (namely that they think manned space flight is no better than near useless and shouldn't be a priority of NASA).
Otherwise, hints of even suggested priorities open up lawsuits against NASA for not focusing on "muslim outreach" as if that was ever in their fucking charter.
I see several problems with that assertion. First, hints aren't legally binding. Second, there's already a NASA charter, but it's not legally binding either. What's actually legally binding are the year to year spending allocations passed by Congress, with some modest contribution from annual authorizations.
Congress didn't authorize and fund Muslim outreach as a core NASA goal. And even if they did, they could completely reverse themselves the next year without consequence.
Third, nobody has standing to sue NASA because it isn't following its charter. And even if they did, they still have to get around NASA's sovereign immunity. Congress has granted a variety of exceptions to the federal government's sovereign immunity, but you can bet good money that they didn't grant any exemptions for reinterpreting the will of Congress in court.
For the edification of the rest of Slashdot, backtracking the link that Khayman80 provides, goes through several irrelevant threads until it finally, after around 20 or 30 disgression/regressions/parent posts gets to this post made in September 2014. I side with Jane Q. Public fully (once I saw that he/she explicitly stated an assumption I had concerns about). Fuck you, khayman80.
What I find particular mendacious about this whole idiocy is not the bone-headed, ridiculously long, linked list of zero information, "nuh uh" responses from khayman80, but the innocent-sounding "I just reposted" remark above which dumps you at the head of a very long linked list of bullshit rather than linking you to the meat of the disagreement - like I did above. It's quite clearly harassment from a fool.
khayman80, next time you want to dredge up an old argument, link to the argument directly. It shouldn't take me an hour to figure out what the argument is even about. I wondered for about ten minutes or so, if even the eventual source post would be from last year! It just kept going on and on. I still haven't found out where the quoted comments in Jane Q. Public's source post came from. I guess it was email or perhaps another endless argument elsewhere which didn't show up in my Google search.
so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
Actually that sounds like a really good response. After all, is Bolden, the head of NASA actually acting like muslim outreach is that important? No. Then why not just yawn and move on to something serious?
I have to agree, Jane Q. Public won this one. I backtracked through the threads, and I see no evidence that Jane Q. Public got "net" wrong. khayman80 OTOH ought to brag only about things he/she didn't get badly wrong. For those who are interested, it is instructive how many levels deep you have to go in quotes before you finally get to the "net" debate which khayman80 posts endlessly about. This is a clear case of harassment.
Finally, we have this gem from Jane Q. Public:
In the interest of goodwill I would warn you about trying to argue with this person. I have documented proof that (a) he doesn't argue honestly, (b) he will personally hound and harass people, especially if they prove him wrong. He doesn't seem to be able to accept being wrong.
[...]
If you insist on arguing with him, prepare to have your words repeated -- for years -- out of context and in distorted and misleading ways. I suppose it's possible that it's some kind of personal vendetta against just me, but I suspect an actual personality flaw.
Most of humanity does not agree with you, and most of humanity doesn't constantly have it on their mind because it's not constantly brought up or they can't constantly do something about it personally.
Well, let's look then. According to that linked poll, 46% of 39 sampled country's respondents didn't think that or doesn't know if climate change is a major threat. This includes 60% of the US and China's population. Note that the poll doesn't even ask if climate change is a "top problem", just whether it is a major problem or not.
Another poll indicates that India, the big country missing from the first poll, has very similar attitudes to the US and China on climate change. At this point, we have roughly 60% of 2.9 billion people, roughly 1.7 billion people, who don't think climate change is a major problem.
You can say that a "majority" of humanity disagree with me. Even if that were true, so what? Reality isn't a popularity contest.
Please don't speak to me about this again in the future. I'm sure there's a kindergarten playground somewhere that you can use to soapbox on. While you're at it, preach about horoscopes and whatever other superstitions and nonsense fits with your "denier" mindset these days.
Notice, once again that not even a scrap of justification for your beliefs found its way into your post. I can't be bothered to honor your ridiculous demand for two reasons. First, you have no cause for making the demand. I merely disagree with you on valid grounds, such as lack of evidence and terrible reasoning on your part. Step up your game.
And seriously, what's all this drama about anyway? So what if I disagree with you? It's not the end of the world.
Second, how am I supposed to remember all the Slashdotters who don't want to be questioned on their religious or ideological beliefs? It's an unreasonable burden which I can work around by merely ignoring the request in the first place. Besides, if you make unsubstantiated claims on Slashdot, you should get challenged. That's how it should work.
This is another annoying thing: the unjustified certainty and the irrational villainizing of anyone who thinks differently. Instead of another idiotic reply, how about you consider an application of Occam's razor.
What is more likely? A) Most of humanity has constructed this particular silly and elaborate moral rationalization for why they aren't doing anything about climate change or B) Most of humanity don't have climate change anywhere near the top of the list of serious problems they're worried about.
The only way to divert climate change without causing an economic catastrophe is to give people different options and then very gradually, carefully make those the only options, just like what's already happening.
Or simply not do it at all. What I find annoying about this sort of argument is the lack of evidence supporting the need for "diverting" climate change. Maybe instead of speculating about the personal responsibility of people for problems that might not be problems, we could instead find evidence to support our convictions?
For example, I see evidence from the mild increase in global warming over the past century, that the long term temperature forcing of carbon dioxide is at the very bottom of the IPCC's estimates (1.5-4.5 C of long term warming per doubling of CO2).
Instead we've gone from barely showing that global warming is in part a human-caused thing to modifying human behavior on a global scale, skipping over the most important step, evaluating the costs and benefits of mitigation. I think that's foolhardy, particularly given that most of the rest of the world isn't going along with it.
It also ignores the more pressing problems of the world such as overpopulation, destruction of farmland through mismanagement and poor agriculture techniques, and poverty. In particular, mitigation makes poverty worse, even if all is done is to make the developed world a a more costly and less viable place to be.
Let's look at the reality here. Europe is cutting back on renewable energy programs and subsidies. They aren't going to last forever. Similarly, the US has a really good chance of going Republican. If that happens, then public funding for big renewables projects are going to stop for four years. Further, most renewable energy tools are produced by China. That gravy train probably will continue for a bit, but it's going to peter out sooner or later. My take is that this UN divestment thing is an exit strategy for any big money, smart or otherwise, still in renewable energy.
I don't believe that fossil fuel businesses will necessarily become viable buys, but it's likely to trigger a huge move into renewables, which is a much smaller sector. Pump and dump is a classic way of unloading stock at a high price.
There are two ways this can happen. First, the investors who still want to hold energy stocks will be more invested in renewables, just due to the lack of options. Second, companies that don't want to be subject to the divestment have a strong inventive to buy renewables holdings to counterweight their fossil fuel holdings and keep out of the divestment bulls eye.
My view is that an easy to exploit investment strategy like this is blood in the water for smart money.
But the amounts being divested are too small to flood the market and cut share prices, so they wonâ(TM)t be going cheap.
Any divestment of significant amounts would drop the price of the stocks in question. That it allegedly doesn't, indicates the divestment is insignificant.
As an aside, your link is a ridiculous propaganda piece. Some of the myths are obvious straw men such as the claim that selling oil stocks means the end of the world. Others like the example you mention above just don't make sense - supply and demand doesn't work that way.
Now, obviously if you selling something slowly without creating a pattern or swamping the liquidity of the market, you won't telegraph your intent and get exploited by daytraders, HFT, and the rest of the short term trader food chain. But if you have a lot of large institutional shareholders doing it at once, then the price of the stocks will fall, no matter what some talking head at the Guardian or the UN tells you.
And I notice that the end of your quote mentions another myth. Again, contrary to the assertions of this particular article, having the climate change sensitive shareholders bail out of fossil fuel companies will free them of a significant albatross. Sounds good to me, the fossil fuel company gets rid of an investor problem and the climate change sensitive investor losses some money to the stupid tax. A win for everyone.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is a bored rich club based on the heartless traditions of treating animals like slaves/objects. Combined with a gambling addiction that kills off horses because they are throw away money toys. Cloning just makes that much more obvious.
So what? My argument is still true even in that case. This sort of argument doesn't hold water with me. Should I mess with you and change the rules of whatever you're doing just because I think you're doing something immoral? If there is a problem, there are rational and legal ways to deal with these issues, such as protests, enforcement of animal cruelty laws, etc.
The point of horse racing is to be first across the finish line.
Nope. That's in error right there.
There is huge money in winning.
Let's take a look: There are 13 pages of about 100 horses each who has earned more than $500,000. That's decent money, but not the "huge money" that you claim. The peak is almost $2.8 million for a six year old stallion (Ochoa, still alive). Sounds respectable except that his sire, Tres Seis commands $6,800 in siring fees, despite being 16 years old. He also only raced for three years. So three years of racing and 13 years of siring fees. Think about it.
That's the catch. One can get as much revenue from breeding horses as racing them. But cloning threatens that revenue source. And if we're going to argue, as you did in your post, to do something on the basis of revenue, then anything that preserves the artificial scarcity of horse breeding wins.
Once in a while identical racehorse twins were born, and those have sometimes been champions in modern times, so the ancients may have raced clones.
First, cloning is not perfect. That's one scientific strike against.
Neither is breeding. Your point?
The cloned animal is likely inferior to the original animal. While with breeding, you have at least the chance of getting a superior animal.
WTF does this even mean? People can organize races however they see fit. They can race horses v. motorcycles if they like. The issue here has to do with a registry: Is a clone of a thoroughbred also a thoroughbred? I assume that this is about whether the "thoroughbred" class describes a kind of horse, or whether it's just a label that some organization can apply and withhold as they see fit, something like "horses we like". So, the perfect clone of a Caucasian American is automatically a Caucasian, but not automatically an American. So what sort of a designation is "thoroughbred"?
And they did. I already explained that. The registry is also a game and hence, can be run just like any other game. As to explaining the classification of horse breeds, it's not my problem if you don't understand it. There are rules to these things and that's as far as I care. It's like complaining that chess or bridge rules are unscientific merely because you could make some money by having the rules change.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is as a ritualistic hobby based on the ancient traditions of animal husbandy and breeding combined with a competitive game that focuses on the horses. Cloning breaks that.
Genetic fallacy.
No. It's a genetic fallacy, if the origination is irrelevant. That isn't the case here. The rules of quarter horse breeding make origin relevant.
Yeah, until somebody breeds an even faster horse than all those popular clones, and really cleans up. Cloning wouldn't end breeding, it would just give more breeders access to the best horse genes, which would probably accelerate breeding. For example, it might be interesting to see what offspring are produced if clones of past triple crown winners of different eras are allowed to (naturally) breed. Anyway, right now, everyone runs the offspring of successful horses. Is running the clones of successful horses really so different?
To answer the last question, yes by the means I already explained.
And need I state the obvious? The point of horse breeding and racing is not so that the first few people who happen to clone horses clean up. After all, we could just issue a considerable annual stipend to Gregg Veneklasen, the guy instigating the lawsuit, and skip all the cloning stuff and horse racing.
Are you sure you want insist that horse racing is just like civil war re-enactment? I see many problems with the analogy.
I don't. I suppose we could talk about it to see if there really is a legitimate reason for your perception of the analogy.
How much would it cost to build and launch an 50-tonne "workshop" spacecraft to do the Shuttle's job and then ditch it into the upper atmosphere after every flight? A lot more than a billion a flight, never mind the extra launch of a manned capsule to dock with the Space Workshop module
Why do that when you can launch 10-20 ton chunks into orbit and do all your "workshop" stuff on a permanent space station? For example, instead of developing the near useless Space Shuttle, NASA could have launched and assembled the ISS with the Saturn 1B back in the early 80s.
And looking at your further post on the subject, it's not that hard to launch a teleoperated mechanic arm or two for moving and mating components of the station.
Also, you claim the ISS wasn't even on the drawing board back in the 70s. That is incorrect. That stuff was planned from back in the 60s. NASA allowed its budget to get sucked into another big rocket rather than focus on building space infrastructure that could have actually been useful.
A recoverable and reusable spacecraft with the capabilities to do the same job as the Shuttle would need heat-tiling, some aerodynamic appendages to control re-entry and oh look! it's a Space Shuttle!
Not at all. A fluffier vehicle (with less density per cross-sectional area) would have less heat load at reentry and could make do with a titanium or other more mundane heat shields.
At the moment Dragon's only intended purpose is ferrying crews to the ISS but the space station is wearing out and its days are numbered. Once it is decommissioned then what? Dragon can only put meatbags in space, it can't do anything else unless there's somewhere for them to work and live. The Shuttle was an inelegant solution to that problem but it worked for 133 and a half flights. Sure it cost a lot but spaceflight generally costs a lot, thousands of bucks per kilo into LEO.
Falcon 9 can put up another ISS. And that's not even counting the Falcon Heavy, which can throw massive payloads to space (though it doesn't quite have the fairing size of the Space Shuttle payload bay). I would go with inflatable modules and the Falcon Heavy.
Sure. Let's look at the issue. First, cloning is not perfect. That's one scientific strike against.
Second, if we're going with scientific reasons for voiding rules of horse racing, why have horse races at all? Surely, it'd be simpler and vastly more efficient use of resources just to randomly assign a winner to any such contest and just get rid of horses and racing altogether.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is as a ritualistic hobby based on the ancient traditions of animal husbandy and breeding combined with a competitive game that focuses on the horses. Cloning breaks that.
It's obvious that ancient horse breeders didn't clone. Similarly, as has been pointed out, if a particular horse is wildly successful compared to the rest, then you'll see races where everyone runs a clone of that particular horse. Then the races focus on less interesting stuff, basically the jockeys and how good a clone each horse is.
The point here is that horse racing of particular breeds is deliberately retro. Allowing futuristic techniques is completely antithetical to the exercise. It's like conducting a (US) Civil War reenactment with drones, tanks, and F-16 fighters.
It's not a legal contract, it's the idea that you are beholden to the society you are in.
Now I'm going on a limb here, but I think Rosseau wasn't being a complete dumbshit by choosing the term, "social contract". He could have chosen, for example, "The Social Duty" or "The Social Obligation" as the title of his book. But he didn't.
And that means all the trappings of a legal contract including mutual, uncoerced consent to the contract, to the content of the contract, and to any adjustments made; fair dispute resolution; and all parties understanding the contract, its content and implications.
This attitude that society can pile shit on you without your explicit consent and your only choices are to comply, flee, or face the consequences is complete bullshit. Consider the tragic example of Polish Jews during the Second World War. They didn't have a say in their country being conquered by the Nazis or getting sent to the death camps. But according to you, you're beholden to the society you're in - even if you fought hard to keep that society from being that way and can't flee because they stuck you in a death camp. It is obscene.
Rosseau also had a thing for liberty which seems to be completely absent from modern advocacy of the "social contract". For example, the point of restraining natural rights, such as freedom to do anything you want (including harming or killing other people), was to enable civil rights, such as ownership of property or travel without fear of being robbed. It wasn't to create a society that can do to you arbitrary whims of the moment.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think the body of scientific work regarding climate change is wrong, then write down your findings, get it peer-reviewed, and get it published.
Are you going to pay for my research costs? It'll be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. Else, no. I'm not doing that.
Now, if you want to debate neurophilosophy as it pertains to approaches in artificial intelligence, then there are a few topics I'm equipped for.
Which unfortunately are quite irrelevant to discussions of global warming.
Otherwise, maybe you should approach climate scientists to discuss climate science. That is, unless you're in the habit of going to your mechanic for legal advice, attorney for medical advice, and doctor to get your car fixed.
Then don't have an opinion on something you aren't knowledgeable about. It's not that hard.
electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source
In the link I provided, Jane Q. Public explained why he/she dropped the "radiative power in" term as being negligible. I found the argument sufficient.
Having read your blog a bit more, I think it's time you dial back on your obsessive stalking. Glancing over your Dumb Scientist link, I see that you linked to my Slashdot posts dozens of times without ever discussing this with me or having a coherent argument for why you did so.
I don't really mind, since it increases the visibility of the posts. I think they're good material and will weather the years well. But you're missing an opportunity for enlightening and/or entertainment.
Just two weeks later, it becomes clear that Iâ(TM)ve failed to communicate once again. The futility of these conversations is depressing and frustrating. Itâ(TM)s just not worth trying to clear up this apparent confusion of ~200 year instrumental aggregates with ~650,000 year ice core proxies like EPICA.
Update: Iâ(TM)ve failed to communicate again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.
Each "again" is a link to one of my posts over what appears to be a year period between 2013 and 2014. I can't tell if they're all climate related (I doubt a one of them has anything to do with 650k year ice cores), but I had fun reading through them. Since Slashdot works so poorly with Google search, I might have better luck searching for my global warming change-related posts via your blog than via Google. There's some good stuff in there. Maybe you ought to read through my stuff sometime.
As a final remark, I posted this on your website in 2011 and my opinion has not changed since except for the last paragraph (due to the current creepy stalker vibe).
Let me put it simply. I donâ(TM)t trust the current research. I donâ(TM)t trust your or my characterizations of the current research. I donâ(TM)t have the time to figure this out though my belief is that there is insufficient uncertainty in the predictions of future climate change.
I figure though that this will all settled down in a couple of decades. Weâ(TM)ll almost double the duration of satellite-based evidence (plus have a greater span of data collected) and global warming will be more pronounced by then. Further, the economics side will be better known. Weâ(TM)ll have a better idea of the future direction of fossil fuels since peak oil will probably happen by then with peak natural gas coming. Alternative technologies like solar cells (which appear to be declining in price per watt by about 50% per eight years) may obsolete some or most fossil fuel needs. Perhaps the problem will solve itself by then.
I thank you for this marvelous website though. You have been sincere, helpful, and knowledgeable. I will consider your words even though Iâ(TM)m obviously not very receptive at the moment.
That remains my position. A couple of decades of climate should be enough, if there's a near future problem. So far, it doesn't appear to indicate such a problem wih slow warming growth.
I disagree, of course. Scenario B is the one assuming a negative, namely, that people don't have a belief about the seriousness of global warming. That's pretty simple. While scenario A assumes existence of a particular, elaborate moral fascade. After all, there isn't exactly one way bad/stupid/irrational manifests, so why would a few billion peoples all manifest in more or less the same way?
Every single influential paper to ever be published that concluded that there is no anthropocene it turned out was written by somebody paid to lie.
Anthropocene != global warming. A newspaper gives you a lot of evidence for the anthropocene (which is merely that humanity has an impact on the entire world) as well. Also, I see you don't bother to actually link to any such "single influential paper".
It's a matter of natural fact that is inconvenient for some people, so they've spent time trying to make it all not true.
A "natural fact" which you can't even bother to state. I'm assuming it's that humanity is causing catastrophic levels of global warming, but maybe you have something completely different in mind.
I don't have to justify anything to you, and I'm not talking about beliefs. This doesn't have anything to do with beliefs. You can't just believe hard enough and make reality as you want it to be. This isn't fairy land.
Again no evidence provided. Just an assertion about me based on nothing.
I'm trying really hard to be more polite to you than you deserve on this topic out of respect for this website and the other people on it.
No, you aren't. This condescending tripe is not "polite". And I see more fantasy libel about my "zealous" and/or "psychopath" nature.
Please. Every time the topic of climate change comes up, it's not an automatic invitation for you to recruit for your ignorant cause.
Again, no evidence. And to the contrary, if you post on Slashdot, you are indeed automatically inviting all sorts of discussion, including that which you disagree with.
Furthermore, if you want to learn about climate change then there are better sources than me. There is nothing but a migraine for me to gain by discussing this further with you. There is nothing for you to gain because I don't have the patience to do this. Some people out there do, and they can do more for you than I can. So, there's no point in discussing this.
You could always learn something about the subject rather than once again not presenting even a shred of evidence for your beliefs.
Nature is not beholden to what you want to be true. It's not beholden to what you think is economically necessary. It's not beholden to what you "believe". It is not beholden to what you think is politically convenient. It is not beholden to what some amoral sociopath was paid to repeat at you through your television. You're not a god, and you're not going to convince anybody.
What evidence makes you think this is actually the problem? I think what is most remarkable about your argument is the complete absence of scientific thought and rhetoric. Even the most delusional can make the same content-free argument. I could copy and paste it with a little strategic editing to fit the present topic and dump on anyone. It would be just as valid as it is now.
OTOH, I present evidence in argument to the claim that we should evaluate our present climate change before "diverting" carbon dioxide emissions. The first is the observation that majorities of the most populated countries on Earth are not with the program. Second, estimates of past climate are based on very tenuous linkage to the modern era and more or less accurate measurement of relevant climate parameters.
Third, we have a systematic bias in climate research and presentation of climate research towards exaggerating the effects of global warming. One obvious way that manifests is via the IPCC. It distills all climate research into a single opinion in the "Su
Case closed? Hardly. The CRU emails reveal internal doubts about this entire enterprise both before and after the hockey stick made its debut. In a 1996 email to a large number of scientists in the CRU circle, Tom Wigley, a top climatologist working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, cautioned: "I support the continued collection of such data, but I am disturbed by how some people in the paleo community try to oversell their product." Mann and his colleagues made use of some of the CRU data, but some of the CRU scientists weren't comfortable with the way Mann represented it and also seemed to find Mann more than a bit insufferable.
... and (better say no more)."
... It is puzzling to me that a guy as bright as Mike would be so unwilling to evaluate his own work a bit more objectively."
CRU scientist Keith Briffa, whose work on tree rings in Siberia has been subject to its own controversies, emailed Edward Cook of Columbia University: "I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative) tropical series," adding that he was tired of "the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbiage [Mann] has produced over the last few years
Cook replied: "I agree with you. We both know the probable flaws in Mike's recon[struction], particularly as it relates to the tropical stuff. Your response is also why I chose not to read the published version of his letter. It would be too aggravating.
In yet another revealing email, Cook told Briffa: "Of course [Bradley] and other members of the MBH [Mann, Bradley, Hughes] camp have a fundamental dislike for the very concept of the MWP, so I tend to view their evaluations as starting out from a somewhat biased perspective, i.e. the cup is not only 'half-empty'; it is demonstrably 'broken'. I come more from the 'cup half-full' camp when it comes to the MWP, maybe yes, maybe no, but it is too early to say what it is."
In another email to Briffa, Cook complains about Bradley, too: "His air of papal infallibility is really quite nauseating at times."
Even as the IPCC was picking up Mann's hockey stick with enthusiasm, Briffa sent Mann a note of caution about "the possibility of expressing an impression of more consensus than might actually exist. I suppose the earlier talk implying that we should not 'muddy the waters' by including contradictory evidence worried me. IPCC is supposed to represent consensus but also areas of uncertainty in the evidence." Briffa had previously dissented from the hockey stick reconstruction in a 1999 email to Mann and Phil Jones: "I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago." Even Malcolm Hughes, one of the original hockey stick coauthors, privately expressed reservations about overreliance on their invention, writing to Cook, Mann and others in 2002:
All of our attempts, so far, to estimate hemisphere-scale temperatures for the period around 1000 years ago are based on far fewer data than any of us would like. None of the datasets used so far has anything like the geographical distribution that experience with recent centuries indicates we need, and no one has yet found a convincing way of validating the lower-frequency components of them against independent data. As Ed [Cook] wrote, in the tree-ring records that form the backbone of most of the published estimates, the problem of poor replication near the beginnin
The point here is no scientific organization should have to even remotely pander to such nonsense that has fuck-all to do with space exploration.
Welcome to the real world. There's no point to lecturing me on what scientific organizations should and shouldn't do. Pandering to such nonsense is a common burden on scientific organizations all over the world.
Even yawning costs taxpayer money.
NASA blows a lot more than yawning money on what it does inefficiently and ineffectively. For example, the SLS is in itself a complete waste. That's more than yawning money right there.
How about ignore altogether, and remove those who think otherwise.
Ok, who should be removed? I don't see anyone who actually believes Muslim outreach is that important. And this opens us up to a slippery slope where we fire everyone whose beliefs aren't entirely in line with the missions of the various organizations that they happen to be a part of. Just in NASA, we have a bunch of people in the unmanned space program who would have beliefs in conflict with NASA's manned space activities (namely that they think manned space flight is no better than near useless and shouldn't be a priority of NASA).
Otherwise, hints of even suggested priorities open up lawsuits against NASA for not focusing on "muslim outreach" as if that was ever in their fucking charter.
I see several problems with that assertion. First, hints aren't legally binding. Second, there's already a NASA charter, but it's not legally binding either. What's actually legally binding are the year to year spending allocations passed by Congress, with some modest contribution from annual authorizations.
Congress didn't authorize and fund Muslim outreach as a core NASA goal. And even if they did, they could completely reverse themselves the next year without consequence.
Third, nobody has standing to sue NASA because it isn't following its charter. And even if they did, they still have to get around NASA's sovereign immunity. Congress has granted a variety of exceptions to the federal government's sovereign immunity, but you can bet good money that they didn't grant any exemptions for reinterpreting the will of Congress in court.
Yes. I think though it's more deliberately downplayed than ignored.
For the edification of the rest of Slashdot, backtracking the link that Khayman80 provides, goes through several irrelevant threads until it finally, after around 20 or 30 disgression/regressions/parent posts gets to this post made in September 2014. I side with Jane Q. Public fully (once I saw that he/she explicitly stated an assumption I had concerns about). Fuck you, khayman80.
What I find particular mendacious about this whole idiocy is not the bone-headed, ridiculously long, linked list of zero information, "nuh uh" responses from khayman80, but the innocent-sounding "I just reposted" remark above which dumps you at the head of a very long linked list of bullshit rather than linking you to the meat of the disagreement - like I did above. It's quite clearly harassment from a fool.
khayman80, next time you want to dredge up an old argument, link to the argument directly. It shouldn't take me an hour to figure out what the argument is even about. I wondered for about ten minutes or so, if even the eventual source post would be from last year! It just kept going on and on. I still haven't found out where the quoted comments in Jane Q. Public's source post came from. I guess it was email or perhaps another endless argument elsewhere which didn't show up in my Google search.
so the HEAD of NASA says that the single most important thing he has been tasked to do is muslim outreach... and all you can say is yawn and make up excuses???
Actually that sounds like a really good response. After all, is Bolden, the head of NASA actually acting like muslim outreach is that important? No. Then why not just yawn and move on to something serious?
In the interest of goodwill I would warn you about trying to argue with this person. I have documented proof that (a) he doesn't argue honestly, (b) he will personally hound and harass people, especially if they prove him wrong. He doesn't seem to be able to accept being wrong.
[...] If you insist on arguing with him, prepare to have your words repeated -- for years -- out of context and in distorted and misleading ways. I suppose it's possible that it's some kind of personal vendetta against just me, but I suspect an actual personality flaw.
Looks like Jane Q. Public got another one right.
The original poster seemed to think differently. I don't know why.
Most of humanity does not agree with you, and most of humanity doesn't constantly have it on their mind because it's not constantly brought up or they can't constantly do something about it personally.
Well, let's look then. According to that linked poll, 46% of 39 sampled country's respondents didn't think that or doesn't know if climate change is a major threat. This includes 60% of the US and China's population. Note that the poll doesn't even ask if climate change is a "top problem", just whether it is a major problem or not.
Another poll indicates that India, the big country missing from the first poll, has very similar attitudes to the US and China on climate change. At this point, we have roughly 60% of 2.9 billion people, roughly 1.7 billion people, who don't think climate change is a major problem.
You can say that a "majority" of humanity disagree with me. Even if that were true, so what? Reality isn't a popularity contest.
Please don't speak to me about this again in the future. I'm sure there's a kindergarten playground somewhere that you can use to soapbox on. While you're at it, preach about horoscopes and whatever other superstitions and nonsense fits with your "denier" mindset these days.
Notice, once again that not even a scrap of justification for your beliefs found its way into your post. I can't be bothered to honor your ridiculous demand for two reasons. First, you have no cause for making the demand. I merely disagree with you on valid grounds, such as lack of evidence and terrible reasoning on your part. Step up your game.
And seriously, what's all this drama about anyway? So what if I disagree with you? It's not the end of the world.
Second, how am I supposed to remember all the Slashdotters who don't want to be questioned on their religious or ideological beliefs? It's an unreasonable burden which I can work around by merely ignoring the request in the first place. Besides, if you make unsubstantiated claims on Slashdot, you should get challenged. That's how it should work.
This is another annoying thing: the unjustified certainty and the irrational villainizing of anyone who thinks differently. Instead of another idiotic reply, how about you consider an application of Occam's razor.
What is more likely? A) Most of humanity has constructed this particular silly and elaborate moral rationalization for why they aren't doing anything about climate change or B) Most of humanity don't have climate change anywhere near the top of the list of serious problems they're worried about.
Called it. Now admittedly, I wasn't sure it was a scam till late last year, but I always strongly suspected it wasn't a serious project.
The only way to divert climate change without causing an economic catastrophe is to give people different options and then very gradually, carefully make those the only options, just like what's already happening.
Or simply not do it at all. What I find annoying about this sort of argument is the lack of evidence supporting the need for "diverting" climate change. Maybe instead of speculating about the personal responsibility of people for problems that might not be problems, we could instead find evidence to support our convictions?
For example, I see evidence from the mild increase in global warming over the past century, that the long term temperature forcing of carbon dioxide is at the very bottom of the IPCC's estimates (1.5-4.5 C of long term warming per doubling of CO2).
Instead we've gone from barely showing that global warming is in part a human-caused thing to modifying human behavior on a global scale, skipping over the most important step, evaluating the costs and benefits of mitigation. I think that's foolhardy, particularly given that most of the rest of the world isn't going along with it.
It also ignores the more pressing problems of the world such as overpopulation, destruction of farmland through mismanagement and poor agriculture techniques, and poverty. In particular, mitigation makes poverty worse, even if all is done is to make the developed world a a more costly and less viable place to be.
when it solar and wind to be be cheaper than fossil fuels, no matter how much crude is on the market.
Almost no crude oil is used for electricity generation. You show the typical level of ignorance for someone dishing out free stock tips.
Let's look at the reality here. Europe is cutting back on renewable energy programs and subsidies. They aren't going to last forever. Similarly, the US has a really good chance of going Republican. If that happens, then public funding for big renewables projects are going to stop for four years. Further, most renewable energy tools are produced by China. That gravy train probably will continue for a bit, but it's going to peter out sooner or later. My take is that this UN divestment thing is an exit strategy for any big money, smart or otherwise, still in renewable energy.
I don't believe that fossil fuel businesses will necessarily become viable buys, but it's likely to trigger a huge move into renewables, which is a much smaller sector. Pump and dump is a classic way of unloading stock at a high price.
There are two ways this can happen. First, the investors who still want to hold energy stocks will be more invested in renewables, just due to the lack of options. Second, companies that don't want to be subject to the divestment have a strong inventive to buy renewables holdings to counterweight their fossil fuel holdings and keep out of the divestment bulls eye.
My view is that an easy to exploit investment strategy like this is blood in the water for smart money.
But the amounts being divested are too small to flood the market and cut share prices, so they wonâ(TM)t be going cheap.
Any divestment of significant amounts would drop the price of the stocks in question. That it allegedly doesn't, indicates the divestment is insignificant.
As an aside, your link is a ridiculous propaganda piece. Some of the myths are obvious straw men such as the claim that selling oil stocks means the end of the world. Others like the example you mention above just don't make sense - supply and demand doesn't work that way.
Now, obviously if you selling something slowly without creating a pattern or swamping the liquidity of the market, you won't telegraph your intent and get exploited by daytraders, HFT, and the rest of the short term trader food chain. But if you have a lot of large institutional shareholders doing it at once, then the price of the stocks will fall, no matter what some talking head at the Guardian or the UN tells you.
And I notice that the end of your quote mentions another myth. Again, contrary to the assertions of this particular article, having the climate change sensitive shareholders bail out of fossil fuel companies will free them of a significant albatross. Sounds good to me, the fossil fuel company gets rid of an investor problem and the climate change sensitive investor losses some money to the stupid tax. A win for everyone.
Good point, but I think that would be more interesting with genetic engineering. Cloning doesn't really add that much on its own.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is a bored rich club based on the heartless traditions of treating animals like slaves/objects. Combined with a gambling addiction that kills off horses because they are throw away money toys. Cloning just makes that much more obvious.
So what? My argument is still true even in that case. This sort of argument doesn't hold water with me. Should I mess with you and change the rules of whatever you're doing just because I think you're doing something immoral? If there is a problem, there are rational and legal ways to deal with these issues, such as protests, enforcement of animal cruelty laws, etc.
The point of horse racing is to be first across the finish line.
Nope. That's in error right there.
There is huge money in winning.
Let's take a look: There are 13 pages of about 100 horses each who has earned more than $500,000. That's decent money, but not the "huge money" that you claim. The peak is almost $2.8 million for a six year old stallion (Ochoa, still alive). Sounds respectable except that his sire, Tres Seis commands $6,800 in siring fees, despite being 16 years old. He also only raced for three years. So three years of racing and 13 years of siring fees. Think about it.
That's the catch. One can get as much revenue from breeding horses as racing them. But cloning threatens that revenue source. And if we're going to argue, as you did in your post, to do something on the basis of revenue, then anything that preserves the artificial scarcity of horse breeding wins.
Once in a while identical racehorse twins were born, and those have sometimes been champions in modern times, so the ancients may have raced clones.
Twins != cloning.
First, cloning is not perfect. That's one scientific strike against.
Neither is breeding. Your point?
The cloned animal is likely inferior to the original animal. While with breeding, you have at least the chance of getting a superior animal.
WTF does this even mean? People can organize races however they see fit. They can race horses v. motorcycles if they like. The issue here has to do with a registry: Is a clone of a thoroughbred also a thoroughbred? I assume that this is about whether the "thoroughbred" class describes a kind of horse, or whether it's just a label that some organization can apply and withhold as they see fit, something like "horses we like". So, the perfect clone of a Caucasian American is automatically a Caucasian, but not automatically an American. So what sort of a designation is "thoroughbred"?
And they did. I already explained that. The registry is also a game and hence, can be run just like any other game. As to explaining the classification of horse breeds, it's not my problem if you don't understand it. There are rules to these things and that's as far as I care. It's like complaining that chess or bridge rules are unscientific merely because you could make some money by having the rules change.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is as a ritualistic hobby based on the ancient traditions of animal husbandy and breeding combined with a competitive game that focuses on the horses. Cloning breaks that.
Genetic fallacy.
No. It's a genetic fallacy, if the origination is irrelevant. That isn't the case here. The rules of quarter horse breeding make origin relevant.
Yeah, until somebody breeds an even faster horse than all those popular clones, and really cleans up. Cloning wouldn't end breeding, it would just give more breeders access to the best horse genes, which would probably accelerate breeding. For example, it might be interesting to see what offspring are produced if clones of past triple crown winners of different eras are allowed to (naturally) breed. Anyway, right now, everyone runs the offspring of successful horses. Is running the clones of successful horses really so different?
To answer the last question, yes by the means I already explained.
And need I state the obvious? The point of horse breeding and racing is not so that the first few people who happen to clone horses clean up. After all, we could just issue a considerable annual stipend to Gregg Veneklasen, the guy instigating the lawsuit, and skip all the cloning stuff and horse racing.
Are you sure you want insist that horse racing is just like civil war re-enactment? I see many problems with the analogy.
I don't. I suppose we could talk about it to see if there really is a legitimate reason for your perception of the analogy.
How much would it cost to build and launch an 50-tonne "workshop" spacecraft to do the Shuttle's job and then ditch it into the upper atmosphere after every flight? A lot more than a billion a flight, never mind the extra launch of a manned capsule to dock with the Space Workshop module
Why do that when you can launch 10-20 ton chunks into orbit and do all your "workshop" stuff on a permanent space station? For example, instead of developing the near useless Space Shuttle, NASA could have launched and assembled the ISS with the Saturn 1B back in the early 80s.
And looking at your further post on the subject, it's not that hard to launch a teleoperated mechanic arm or two for moving and mating components of the station.
Also, you claim the ISS wasn't even on the drawing board back in the 70s. That is incorrect. That stuff was planned from back in the 60s. NASA allowed its budget to get sucked into another big rocket rather than focus on building space infrastructure that could have actually been useful.
A recoverable and reusable spacecraft with the capabilities to do the same job as the Shuttle would need heat-tiling, some aerodynamic appendages to control re-entry and oh look! it's a Space Shuttle!
Not at all. A fluffier vehicle (with less density per cross-sectional area) would have less heat load at reentry and could make do with a titanium or other more mundane heat shields.
At the moment Dragon's only intended purpose is ferrying crews to the ISS but the space station is wearing out and its days are numbered. Once it is decommissioned then what? Dragon can only put meatbags in space, it can't do anything else unless there's somewhere for them to work and live. The Shuttle was an inelegant solution to that problem but it worked for 133 and a half flights. Sure it cost a lot but spaceflight generally costs a lot, thousands of bucks per kilo into LEO.
Falcon 9 can put up another ISS. And that's not even counting the Falcon Heavy, which can throw massive payloads to space (though it doesn't quite have the fairing size of the Space Shuttle payload bay). I would go with inflatable modules and the Falcon Heavy.
Scientifically, I agree the clone should qualify.
Sure. Let's look at the issue. First, cloning is not perfect. That's one scientific strike against.
Second, if we're going with scientific reasons for voiding rules of horse racing, why have horse races at all? Surely, it'd be simpler and vastly more efficient use of resources just to randomly assign a winner to any such contest and just get rid of horses and racing altogether.
As I see it, the point of horse racing is as a ritualistic hobby based on the ancient traditions of animal husbandy and breeding combined with a competitive game that focuses on the horses. Cloning breaks that.
It's obvious that ancient horse breeders didn't clone. Similarly, as has been pointed out, if a particular horse is wildly successful compared to the rest, then you'll see races where everyone runs a clone of that particular horse. Then the races focus on less interesting stuff, basically the jockeys and how good a clone each horse is.
The point here is that horse racing of particular breeds is deliberately retro. Allowing futuristic techniques is completely antithetical to the exercise. It's like conducting a (US) Civil War reenactment with drones, tanks, and F-16 fighters.
It's not a legal contract, it's the idea that you are beholden to the society you are in.
Now I'm going on a limb here, but I think Rosseau wasn't being a complete dumbshit by choosing the term, "social contract". He could have chosen, for example, "The Social Duty" or "The Social Obligation" as the title of his book. But he didn't.
And that means all the trappings of a legal contract including mutual, uncoerced consent to the contract, to the content of the contract, and to any adjustments made; fair dispute resolution; and all parties understanding the contract, its content and implications.
This attitude that society can pile shit on you without your explicit consent and your only choices are to comply, flee, or face the consequences is complete bullshit. Consider the tragic example of Polish Jews during the Second World War. They didn't have a say in their country being conquered by the Nazis or getting sent to the death camps. But according to you, you're beholden to the society you're in - even if you fought hard to keep that society from being that way and can't flee because they stuck you in a death camp. It is obscene.
Rosseau also had a thing for liberty which seems to be completely absent from modern advocacy of the "social contract". For example, the point of restraining natural rights, such as freedom to do anything you want (including harming or killing other people), was to enable civil rights, such as ownership of property or travel without fear of being robbed. It wasn't to create a society that can do to you arbitrary whims of the moment.