I wouldn't call it "hypocritical" to suggest that China has some distinctive "secrecy evil". It does after all have that along with every other such authoritarian government. I also find it interesting how some people seem more concerned about hypocrisy than about genuine evil. I didn't know successful evil was about lowering expectations.
THEY are very much protected from public scrutiny.
That isn't government information. As another replier noted (sarcastically), it's a trade secret. You need a better reason than merely being nosy to know that sort of information.
Try walking through Italy and see if you can't find someone infested with yersinia pestis.
While the Bubonic Plague is far from dead, we have this:
There is no plague in Europe; the last reported cases occurred after World War II.
So in other words, you're not going to find someone in Italy "infested" with the bacterium that causes Plague, unless they picked it up somewhere else.
if it's all about money, then why isn't the oil industry trying to monopolize on green energy as well?
Monpoly means absence of competition. Not merely, that there's business activity going on. The oil market has plenty of competition, meaning it isn't a monopoly or even close to a monopoly. Even the money thing is not a monopoly since various governments have their own currencies.
Crazy weather is a common byproduct of global warming and it has huge economic effects here and now.
No, it is speculated to be, but no one actually has collected enough evidence to show that. And we would expect crazy weather anyway even if AGW didn't have an effect.
I have every faith that 300 years from now we'll still be around, how many people had to die to get us there is a huge looming question.
It's worth noting here that no one has come up with an effect of AGW that would kill a lot of people. What currently kills a lot of people from natural causes are things like dysfunctional governments and societies, and lack of preparedness. That's stuff that would kill people whether or not AGW has an effect.
As I noted before, they have parents who could make sure they show up on time and keep them disciplined. They haven't gone feral yet (a common problem with 20 year olds who haven't seen work before) and they also are of an age where they can learn things.
I'm not pining for the sweat shops and union-busting of the Gilded Age in the US, but I think it is profoundly foolish not to encourage young adults to work and learn something useful.
The group in question extrapolated that roughly 3% of the proposals had instplagiarism. There's no way that 97% of the proposals aren't using boilerplate.
and no company (besides the banks) deserves to die because a bunch of bankers screwed up the economy
Ignoring here that GM was one of the bankers that screwed up the economy, we have to keep in mind that there are other reasons for a business to "deserve to die". GM has the problem that it has for many decades not been responsive to its customers and been run incompetently since at least the mid 70s.
And it is also clear to me that you don't know anything about quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is a process by which the Federal Reserve sells short-term treasuries in order to purchase long-term treasuries. The purpose of this is to push down long-term interest rates and push up expectations of inflation. This really isn't even remotely related to any sort of bailout.
Unless the QE funding was used at some point to buy GM bonds (the Fed buys a lot of private securities with that money, not just short-term treasuries) and the funds then used to pay off GM's TARP loans. That would be related to a bailout.
It would also be quite absurd for the US government to sell its stake in GM until the economy recovers, and which point I strongly expect GM stock to have recovered.
While GM continues to lose market share? There won't be a GM recovery unless the federal government sticks another limb into the tar baby and gives them more money.
because climate scientists are inherently conservative
Maybe some of them are. But I've seen too much exaggeration and alarmism from that sector to buy that claim.
We know that runaway warming happened 250 million years ago and killed off virtually everything on the planet
And here's an example of that "inherently conservative" alarmism. We don't know that.
Volcanism on the scale of the Siberian Traps (which, if it had occurred on the Moon would be one of the top three Mares by size) does a lot more than release greenhouse gasses. It releases a vast amount of toxic gasses, such as fluorine, sulfur oxides, carbon dioxide, etc, and high altitude ash. It also would dump a bunch of nutrients into the oceans (from volcanic ash), which would have the effect of stimulating the growth of algae and removing oxygen from the oceans (and perhaps from the air as well), and change the albedo of ice fields and glaciers globally.
Some of these effects would increase global temperature; some would decrease it; and some are merely highly detrimental to oxygen-breathing life without having much effect on global temperature.
My guess is that the problems from these vast eruptions wouldn't have been global warming, but rather radical and frequent climate changes along with oxygen depletion of the oceans and perhaps the atmosphere.
but nobody knows if and how it would play out today and what it would take to start it and what it would take to stop it if it's started.
Well, we have the Paleoceneâ"Eocene Thermal Maximum. It started via warming and stopped naturally. So while I don't if there is enough methane clathrates available at current and near future temperatures to start such a "tipping point" (keep in mind that we lost (when the ice caps retreated) or buried (under 100 meters of sea water) a lot of our methane clathrates with the end of the last ice age), I can say that it would stop at some point naturally, because that's what happened in the past when this occurred (plus, methane doesn't have a long life in the atmosphere).
There is evidence, there's a video and a peer reviewed white paper translated to english.
Evidence distinguishes between different hypotheses. These would exist whether they are right, wrong, or fraudulent.
"There's no mechanism by which momentum can be transferred from the system to the outside world, but the EM drive needs that in order to work."
What if it works differently then you suppose it could?
Well, it can't work the way I "suppose" (which really is the way the EM drive creators suppose, I might add). So some degree of actually working would be an improvement.
It's not too much to ask for such a claim that first, someone actually comes up with a working model that makes sense as well as a solid experimental demonstration. For example, that was done with Mach Lorentz Thrusters (MLT).
One isn't "sold into slavery" when you work for pay. Equating honest, paid work with slavery is just another example of the cognitive dissonance that surrounds this subject.
Not for the stock that the federal government purchased. That's well under water.
Also, where did GM get the money to pay off that loan? Remember they were near bankruptcy for a reason, because they were pretty incompetent at making and selling cars. That reason still applies.
I think we're seeing other federal funding, say QE ("Quantitative Easing") or stimulus money, redirected here.
Satellites can measure heat emitted from an entire hemisphere of Earth. It's not perfect, since they're measuring the emissions from a column of air at any given point on Earth instead of at the surface of the Earth, but it is far more accurate an approach than anything that's come before.
Some important datasets have been damaged of late, you know, apparently to achieve some political ends.
You're saying that hiring an eight year old with no experience is less risky than hiring a twenty year old with no experience?
Well, having a responsible parent around does help a lot. And back when there wasn't a minimum wage, the risk of employing those kids could be balanced with significantly lower pay. Someone who lives with their parents can afford to be paid less than someone who doesn't (and most such young adults don't live with their parents, even now).
I think it seems to have worked out pretty well when we've, say, stopped industry from hiring 8 year olds
Well, it's worth noting here that we in the developed world have created a few generations of rather incompetent workers as a result. I've run into people in their early twenties who have never held a job before. In such situations, an employer takes on a big risk by hiring such people.
And part of the science is that temperature measurements go back to the mid 19th century and actual direct measurement of global average temperature since the 1980s. With such a pausity of observation, one should be very careful about claiming that the science is "well understood". Or at least comfortable with being outrageously wrong.
They're rather expensive (a bit more than gold by weight), but people do sell Mars rocks. No pieces of Venus last I checked, but maybe we have some of that around as well.
There is nothing in space for all practical purposes. If you can't see that, we can't discuss this. Space is an empty, hostile radiation-blasted vacuum.
As I noted, Earth happens to be in space. You note Mars and Venus. I can't imagine what mental dysfunction you must have to label whole planets, including the one you live on, as "nothing". And to continue to do so even when you're called on it. Well that's not my problem.
You'll grow old and feeble and you'll never see your precious space colonies.
Well, I already know of one space colony - Earth. Of course, that's not what you meant, but I think we should recognize that we aren't starting from nothing here.
As to whether I live long enough to see my "precious" space colonies, it's worth noting that human is advancing greatly in the relevant Earth-side technologies as well, particularly manufacture. The barrier to such things is declining with the years. Whether that ends up being good enough is something we'll just have to wait for.
Bankruptcy court would have also sent GM's suppliers into bankruptcy
Why? They're already at the front of the line. What would happened differently is that the United Auto Workers wouldn't have gotten public funding and the public wouldn't be out a few tens of billions of dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
But a 2000 year old Jewish heretic argued for fixing your own shortcomings before condemning your neighbor's
Why do we have rules and punishments for breaking those rules, if the solution is as you indicate to completely fix our own problems first?
I wouldn't call it "hypocritical" to suggest that China has some distinctive "secrecy evil". It does after all have that along with every other such authoritarian government. I also find it interesting how some people seem more concerned about hypocrisy than about genuine evil. I didn't know successful evil was about lowering expectations.
Yeah, i totally want to knock on the door of Cannibal Redneck Cabin and ask if I can borrow a cup of electrons.
Come on. Do you really get your knowledge of the outside world from the movies?
THEY are very much protected from public scrutiny.
That isn't government information. As another replier noted (sarcastically), it's a trade secret. You need a better reason than merely being nosy to know that sort of information.
Try walking through Italy and see if you can't find someone infested with yersinia pestis.
While the Bubonic Plague is far from dead, we have this:
There is no plague in Europe; the last reported cases occurred after World War II.
So in other words, you're not going to find someone in Italy "infested" with the bacterium that causes Plague, unless they picked it up somewhere else.
nd both the US & PRC governments don't like bad press
In other news, once again Slashdotters instinctively drag the US into a discussion of China. It's like a really big province of China, right?
if it's all about money, then why isn't the oil industry trying to monopolize on green energy as well?
Monpoly means absence of competition. Not merely, that there's business activity going on. The oil market has plenty of competition, meaning it isn't a monopoly or even close to a monopoly. Even the money thing is not a monopoly since various governments have their own currencies.
So what's so unusual? That all sounds pretty normal to me.
Crazy weather is a common byproduct of global warming and it has huge economic effects here and now.
No, it is speculated to be, but no one actually has collected enough evidence to show that. And we would expect crazy weather anyway even if AGW didn't have an effect.
I have every faith that 300 years from now we'll still be around, how many people had to die to get us there is a huge looming question.
It's worth noting here that no one has come up with an effect of AGW that would kill a lot of people. What currently kills a lot of people from natural causes are things like dysfunctional governments and societies, and lack of preparedness. That's stuff that would kill people whether or not AGW has an effect.
As I noted before, they have parents who could make sure they show up on time and keep them disciplined. They haven't gone feral yet (a common problem with 20 year olds who haven't seen work before) and they also are of an age where they can learn things.
I'm not pining for the sweat shops and union-busting of the Gilded Age in the US, but I think it is profoundly foolish not to encourage young adults to work and learn something useful.
Quantum mechanics rules out a deterministic universe from our point of view.
Alas, very few people, maybe 20% of the world in total truly know what it is to own their own property in a real sense.
Which is pretty good considering how much of the world has poor laws on ownership of property.
The group in question extrapolated that roughly 3% of the proposals had instplagiarism. There's no way that 97% of the proposals aren't using boilerplate.
and no company (besides the banks) deserves to die because a bunch of bankers screwed up the economy
Ignoring here that GM was one of the bankers that screwed up the economy, we have to keep in mind that there are other reasons for a business to "deserve to die". GM has the problem that it has for many decades not been responsive to its customers and been run incompetently since at least the mid 70s.
And it is also clear to me that you don't know anything about quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is a process by which the Federal Reserve sells short-term treasuries in order to purchase long-term treasuries. The purpose of this is to push down long-term interest rates and push up expectations of inflation. This really isn't even remotely related to any sort of bailout.
Unless the QE funding was used at some point to buy GM bonds (the Fed buys a lot of private securities with that money, not just short-term treasuries) and the funds then used to pay off GM's TARP loans. That would be related to a bailout.
It would also be quite absurd for the US government to sell its stake in GM until the economy recovers, and which point I strongly expect GM stock to have recovered.
While GM continues to lose market share? There won't be a GM recovery unless the federal government sticks another limb into the tar baby and gives them more money.
because climate scientists are inherently conservative
Maybe some of them are. But I've seen too much exaggeration and alarmism from that sector to buy that claim.
We know that runaway warming happened 250 million years ago and killed off virtually everything on the planet
And here's an example of that "inherently conservative" alarmism. We don't know that.
Volcanism on the scale of the Siberian Traps (which, if it had occurred on the Moon would be one of the top three Mares by size) does a lot more than release greenhouse gasses. It releases a vast amount of toxic gasses, such as fluorine, sulfur oxides, carbon dioxide, etc, and high altitude ash. It also would dump a bunch of nutrients into the oceans (from volcanic ash), which would have the effect of stimulating the growth of algae and removing oxygen from the oceans (and perhaps from the air as well), and change the albedo of ice fields and glaciers globally.
Some of these effects would increase global temperature; some would decrease it; and some are merely highly detrimental to oxygen-breathing life without having much effect on global temperature.
My guess is that the problems from these vast eruptions wouldn't have been global warming, but rather radical and frequent climate changes along with oxygen depletion of the oceans and perhaps the atmosphere.
but nobody knows if and how it would play out today and what it would take to start it and what it would take to stop it if it's started.
Well, we have the Paleoceneâ"Eocene Thermal Maximum. It started via warming and stopped naturally. So while I don't if there is enough methane clathrates available at current and near future temperatures to start such a "tipping point" (keep in mind that we lost (when the ice caps retreated) or buried (under 100 meters of sea water) a lot of our methane clathrates with the end of the last ice age), I can say that it would stop at some point naturally, because that's what happened in the past when this occurred (plus, methane doesn't have a long life in the atmosphere).
There is evidence, there's a video and a peer reviewed white paper translated to english.
Evidence distinguishes between different hypotheses. These would exist whether they are right, wrong, or fraudulent.
"There's no mechanism by which momentum can be transferred from the system to the outside world, but the EM drive needs that in order to work."
What if it works differently then you suppose it could?
Well, it can't work the way I "suppose" (which really is the way the EM drive creators suppose, I might add). So some degree of actually working would be an improvement.
It's not too much to ask for such a claim that first, someone actually comes up with a working model that makes sense as well as a solid experimental demonstration. For example, that was done with Mach Lorentz Thrusters (MLT).
One isn't "sold into slavery" when you work for pay. Equating honest, paid work with slavery is just another example of the cognitive dissonance that surrounds this subject.
The money has all been repaid, with interest.
Not for the stock that the federal government purchased. That's well under water.
Also, where did GM get the money to pay off that loan? Remember they were near bankruptcy for a reason, because they were pretty incompetent at making and selling cars. That reason still applies.
I think we're seeing other federal funding, say QE ("Quantitative Easing") or stimulus money, redirected here.
What direct measurements?
Satellites can measure heat emitted from an entire hemisphere of Earth. It's not perfect, since they're measuring the emissions from a column of air at any given point on Earth instead of at the surface of the Earth, but it is far more accurate an approach than anything that's come before.
Some important datasets have been damaged of late, you know, apparently to achieve some political ends.
That doesn't hurt my original observation.
You're saying that hiring an eight year old with no experience is less risky than hiring a twenty year old with no experience?
Well, having a responsible parent around does help a lot. And back when there wasn't a minimum wage, the risk of employing those kids could be balanced with significantly lower pay. Someone who lives with their parents can afford to be paid less than someone who doesn't (and most such young adults don't live with their parents, even now).
I think it seems to have worked out pretty well when we've, say, stopped industry from hiring 8 year olds
Well, it's worth noting here that we in the developed world have created a few generations of rather incompetent workers as a result. I've run into people in their early twenties who have never held a job before. In such situations, an employer takes on a big risk by hiring such people.
The science is well understood
And part of the science is that temperature measurements go back to the mid 19th century and actual direct measurement of global average temperature since the 1980s. With such a pausity of observation, one should be very careful about claiming that the science is "well understood". Or at least comfortable with being outrageously wrong.
Go get me a Mars rock if it's that "mere".
They're rather expensive (a bit more than gold by weight), but people do sell Mars rocks. No pieces of Venus last I checked, but maybe we have some of that around as well.
There is nothing in space for all practical purposes. If you can't see that, we can't discuss this. Space is an empty, hostile radiation-blasted vacuum.
As I noted, Earth happens to be in space. You note Mars and Venus. I can't imagine what mental dysfunction you must have to label whole planets, including the one you live on, as "nothing". And to continue to do so even when you're called on it. Well that's not my problem.
You'll grow old and feeble and you'll never see your precious space colonies.
Well, I already know of one space colony - Earth. Of course, that's not what you meant, but I think we should recognize that we aren't starting from nothing here.
As to whether I live long enough to see my "precious" space colonies, it's worth noting that human is advancing greatly in the relevant Earth-side technologies as well, particularly manufacture. The barrier to such things is declining with the years. Whether that ends up being good enough is something we'll just have to wait for.
Bankruptcy court would have also sent GM's suppliers into bankruptcy
Why? They're already at the front of the line. What would happened differently is that the United Auto Workers wouldn't have gotten public funding and the public wouldn't be out a few tens of billions of dollars.
If the EM Drive was a true violation of conservation of momentum, then we would have seen the effect elsewhere first
This statement is disingenuous. You could make it about every discovery.
And you would typically be in error to do so. Particle colliders would be where a violation of the conservation of momentum would be seen first.