But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment
A key problem is the assumption that local conditions apply globally. Just because your little part of the world may be experiencing these things doesn't mean that everyone does.
But I think you're otherwise right. They're looking at the success of Silicon Valley, which has minted many trillions of dollars over about a human lifespan and thinking that they could get a piece of that.
Yep, those opinions aren't gonna pass peer review I'm afraid.
Don't care. I want more than just veneer.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note
Citation?
My experience with modelers who have to explain why their models, which typically fit the past well, don't fit the future as well.
Every metric we've been able to measure has been trending upwards for the last 150 years. Unless someone suddenly finds convincing evidence that what we've observed is all part of some heretofore-unknown natural cycle that's 300+ years long (and discovered some other factor that meant the calculated CO2 forcing values were all actually far closer to zero than anyone had thought), then there's no plausible reason to suppose this will change.
But hasn't been trending up very fast. You need more than to have the right sign.
Meanwhile, people like yourself will keep dragging their feet, hoping that their preferred hypothesis will one day magically overturn the conclusions of the many scientists with experience and actual data, all because they fear and distrust their own idea of what this might mean politically. How about we all stop trying vainly to undermine the science, and get on with finding an acceptable solution that minimises overall harm?
Evidence is all you need. Not peer review, citations, or other veneer of pseudoscience. In the absence of that evidence, foot dragging is the optimal approach to minimizing overall harm.
There's much more to the picture than a simple error bar; the probability distribution is not linear over that range, nor even simple Gaussian. There is far more information going into their predictions than you seem to realise. The CO2 forcing numbers given are conservative within that range and have high confidence, but even if it were as simple as you appear to think, that would still mean that long-term temperature rise is just as likely to be worse than predicted, rather than better.
The error bars show it is as simple as I think. And I believe reality is even more conservative than the IPCC is on this particular number.
Those who know more about the models don't expect them to match short-term random variation from cycles like ENSO.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note.
They also look beyond just surface temperatures to include weightier indicators like ocean heat content and sea level rise, both of which have exceeded the models' predictions (again, likely due to ENSO).
Unless, of course, that turns out to be wrong. Sea level at least is one of those things which is hard to get wrong or fake over extended periods. So we'll see if sea level rise and the claimed increase in ocean heat content holds up under the passage of time.
Well, you spend more if not most of the time talking about cutting funding/subsidies to research you don't like. That's going to give the impression that you just don't like research altogether.
Even if that were true, that still is a far cry from blocking the technology. Publicly funding research is not the only way, much less a good way, to research new alternate energy technologies. In fact, my view is that publicly funded research often hinders (though not block) research in the areas that are funded since it occupies researchers and other relevant resources in the field who could be more productively used elsewhere in the same field.
Claiming that they need a lot of new observational evidence is similar to the creationist who argues evolution is not proven yet because there are missing fossils and we need more missing links.
And true in this case since climate data is remarkably sparse once you get past 150 years ago.
But even if this is so, we shouldn't block new technology from coming about and just sit back and say "everything will be okay if we just burn more coal and oil".
You're the second replier which has accused me of supporting the blocking of new technology. I don't get that since I don't advocate such a policy.
the batteries need to be thrown away and fill up landfills
Unless we recycle the materials in these batteries. There may well be considerable waste produced anyway, but there's no reason that battery packs containing valuable materials need go in the landfill.
Tesla cars are an example of the stupidity of the industry: charge a huge amount of money for an electric car that only rich people can afford, while pretending to be liberal and helping the world.
Unlike SpaceX, I'm not keen on defending Musk's other company. Here, though we have a well-known technology adoption model at play. The wealthy adopt a technology first, driving up volume of production. Then that leads to cheaper products and greater access for everyone else, for example, airline travel and cell phones.
Even if global warming was not happening at all (which it is), why discourage new technology that solves pollution problems?
While I'm sure someone is confident global warming isn't happening, that person is not me. And who is discouraging new technology? Among other things, I don't consider the absence of subsidies or poorly thought out research grants to be discouragement.
Two arguments are the considerable error bar on long term temperature forcing of a doubling of CO2 and the consistent exaggeration of global warming by past climate models.
What is the final solution for Laissez-faire capitalism, anyhow?
Funny how all the places which have "final solutions" never bothered with laissez faire capitalism. But sure, let's concern ourselves with this imaginary problem and come up with imaginary solutions. Hmm, how about we just not do the final solution thing? I think that solves the problem nicely.
The poor, the indigent and even the lazy will never disappear form the earth.
So? You're just making an argument for laissez faire with that sort of fatalism. If you can't do anything to change the situation, then doing nothing to change the situation is a valid optimal solution.
'm a pragmatist, that most hated species that knows that unbridled idealism of any sort inevitably leads to failure.
Well, if you really are a pragmatist, shouldn't you be discussing real problems instead of imaginary ones? That seems to be the point of the definition of the word.
The developing world isn't suffering from a concentration of capital? Are you kidding?
Technically, no one is suffering. Concentration of capital is one of those imaginary problems. But no matter, wealth and income inequality are getting better in the developing world.
Typically they disregard how society indirectly provides benefits like a skilled labor pool, infrastructure and other foundations for modern civilization that enabled their company to make millions in profit.
But they don't disregard when society provides boat anchors and albatrosses rather than help. Maybe you shouldn't either.
in the same sense that blind social darwinistic capitalism leads to the inevitable concentration of capital and power in the hands of the few, and everyone else dirt poor. that's the end game of unbridled capitalism. the middle class is continuing to die in the usa because too many idiots don't realize this
Capitalism in the US is very much bridled. It may be a bit less than some European countries, but it's vastly more than the developing world which is not having this concentration of capital problem. The real factor in the stagnation of the middle class's wealth is labor competition with people who work for a small fraction of the cost of the US worker. As a result, wealth derived from labor has declined, while wealth derived from other sources, such as capital, has not.
Two thoughts on this. First, don't make a distinction between people and couples. Personally, I think government should get out of the marriage racket and just provide legal infrastructure for domestic partnerships.
Second, my primary concern with this has always been the moral hazard. $6,000 per year per adult isn't very much so why not vote for politicians who promise to give you more? There's always been a significant portion of the US that just doesn't care about the future or understand economics. While some of those people happen to be rich, a lot more aren't. Getting more basic income is going to be an obvious desire.
In the Alaskan case, we still have that moral hazard, but we also have a natural pushback, namely, the revenue funding this scheme comes from the pipelines, not some nebulous tax revenue or debt that we can make higher at will.
Where is this mass of invaders coming from? You are aware that there has been no net immigration from Mexico in the last 5 years.
The US deported over 300k Mexican citizens in 2013.
Even as border apprehensions dropped, deportations of Mexican immigrants reached a record high in 2013 of 314,904, up from 169,031 in 2005. This is due in part to a 2005 shift in policy that has increased the chances of being deported following apprehension in the border region, instead of just being sent back without an order of removal.
They're still trying, but that does seem like the US could be doing something better with its resources than stopping "invaders".
We already have something better than plurality voting, but most voters don't bother to utilize it.
[...]
... primaries...
[...]
The first states vote, and those candidates who do poorly are ignored by voters in other states who vote on later dates, so that they can put their votes where they will make a difference:
[...]
Indeed, even without primaries, we still have pre-election polls which are usually clear enough in telling us who the top two contenders are, and we can simply choose between those two candidates. With no "wasted vote" effect, polls can tell us each candidate's true level of support, since no one has any reason to tell a pollster that they will vote for any candidate other than their favorite, even if they will do so in the election after seeing the incredibly poor poll results for their favorite candidate.
This superior voting mechanism wouldn't happen to be sarcasm, would it? I find your arguments otherwise strangely neutered.
There are folks who have been accused of crimes so terrible that we have chosen to give up rights in order to incarcerate them for the protection of the rest of society. Your view doesn't include those folks and I'm afraid you're definitely in the minority on this one.
We already have laws and legal processes in place for those people. There's nothing to fix here, except perhaps getting a more competent and professional police force. Due process is a core part of democratic law because it has long been the case that wrongful and unjust punishment is a more serious problem than letting a few murderers go for lack of evidence.
He's not on some public facing list, either.
Even if that were true (it's not since the public can access the list as was noted in the second paragraph of the story), he's still on a list that the police can see and that info can be used against him at a later time.
...except that there's not "a great body of evidence that supports the existence of" their invisible sky daddy. Kindly note the difference between having a great body of evidence but produced by others, and just simple belief of others.
Do you have such a short memory or an inability to scroll up and see the post of yours that I replied to?
Of course not. I read through my previous posts and didn't see anything.
I am not playing a game here
Even though I don't buy that at all (though I grant you probably think you're not playing a game), I'll point out that at the time I was using an idiom of speech.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that a consumer economy is funded by the consumers?
There's more to an economy than just consumers. By merely using the term "consumer" you imply the existence of producers who produce the goods and services which are consumed by the consumers. Why is it so hard to credit the people who make decisions with the consequences, good and bad, of those decisions?
That the labor and productivity and earnings of people pay all the bills?
Which is tangential to your assertion of a consumer economy. One doesn't speak of the labor, productivity, or earnings of a consumer. A consumer consumes by definition and consumption is not dependent on those things. Producers have those things.
Is this some artifact left over from the supply-side economics of the '80s?
That you even ask that question indicates you have something to unlearn. The consumer economy is an ideologically driven model. I believe it exists precisely for the use you put it to, to denigrate owners of capital.
No exceptions.
Except the real world, of course. Real economies routinely have complex transactions in which the roles of consumer and producer are often indeterminable. For example, what's the good or service consumed in stock trading and who actually consumes it? And mutual production/consumption is not uncommon (eg, bartering manufactured goods or consumables, or a swap of capital equipment for businesses on the move).
Wrong. It was funded by the customers of big bad Pharma.
Customers didn't choose to fund the research, hence, it's not their baby. And are we going to credit the banks too? They fondled that funding a little bit, sometimes between customer and pharma company. Maybe some drug dealers of the illegal sort? Fast food restaurants? ATM machines?
There's a saying that I think applies here. Money has no provenance. It doesn't matter where the money came from. The people who decided to fund the research are the ones who should be credited for funding the research.
Slashdot Mirror
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment
A key problem is the assumption that local conditions apply globally. Just because your little part of the world may be experiencing these things doesn't mean that everyone does.
But I think you're otherwise right. They're looking at the success of Silicon Valley, which has minted many trillions of dollars over about a human lifespan and thinking that they could get a piece of that.
There's nothing spectacular or special about it, just a guy with a bunch of tools and supplies doing something.
It's just a celebration of the core of civilization.
Yep, those opinions aren't gonna pass peer review I'm afraid.
Don't care. I want more than just veneer.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note
Citation?
My experience with modelers who have to explain why their models, which typically fit the past well, don't fit the future as well.
Every metric we've been able to measure has been trending upwards for the last 150 years. Unless someone suddenly finds convincing evidence that what we've observed is all part of some heretofore-unknown natural cycle that's 300+ years long (and discovered some other factor that meant the calculated CO2 forcing values were all actually far closer to zero than anyone had thought), then there's no plausible reason to suppose this will change.
But hasn't been trending up very fast. You need more than to have the right sign.
Meanwhile, people like yourself will keep dragging their feet, hoping that their preferred hypothesis will one day magically overturn the conclusions of the many scientists with experience and actual data, all because they fear and distrust their own idea of what this might mean politically. How about we all stop trying vainly to undermine the science, and get on with finding an acceptable solution that minimises overall harm?
Evidence is all you need. Not peer review, citations, or other veneer of pseudoscience. In the absence of that evidence, foot dragging is the optimal approach to minimizing overall harm.
There's much more to the picture than a simple error bar; the probability distribution is not linear over that range, nor even simple Gaussian. There is far more information going into their predictions than you seem to realise. The CO2 forcing numbers given are conservative within that range and have high confidence, but even if it were as simple as you appear to think, that would still mean that long-term temperature rise is just as likely to be worse than predicted, rather than better.
The error bars show it is as simple as I think. And I believe reality is even more conservative than the IPCC is on this particular number.
Those who know more about the models don't expect them to match short-term random variation from cycles like ENSO.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note.
They also look beyond just surface temperatures to include weightier indicators like ocean heat content and sea level rise, both of which have exceeded the models' predictions (again, likely due to ENSO).
Unless, of course, that turns out to be wrong. Sea level at least is one of those things which is hard to get wrong or fake over extended periods. So we'll see if sea level rise and the claimed increase in ocean heat content holds up under the passage of time.
Well, you spend more if not most of the time talking about cutting funding/subsidies to research you don't like. That's going to give the impression that you just don't like research altogether.
Even if that were true, that still is a far cry from blocking the technology. Publicly funding research is not the only way, much less a good way, to research new alternate energy technologies. In fact, my view is that publicly funded research often hinders (though not block) research in the areas that are funded since it occupies researchers and other relevant resources in the field who could be more productively used elsewhere in the same field.
Claiming that they need a lot of new observational evidence is similar to the creationist who argues evolution is not proven yet because there are missing fossils and we need more missing links.
And true in this case since climate data is remarkably sparse once you get past 150 years ago.
But even if this is so, we shouldn't block new technology from coming about and just sit back and say "everything will be okay if we just burn more coal and oil".
You're the second replier which has accused me of supporting the blocking of new technology. I don't get that since I don't advocate such a policy.
the batteries need to be thrown away and fill up landfills
Unless we recycle the materials in these batteries. There may well be considerable waste produced anyway, but there's no reason that battery packs containing valuable materials need go in the landfill.
Tesla cars are an example of the stupidity of the industry: charge a huge amount of money for an electric car that only rich people can afford, while pretending to be liberal and helping the world.
Unlike SpaceX, I'm not keen on defending Musk's other company. Here, though we have a well-known technology adoption model at play. The wealthy adopt a technology first, driving up volume of production. Then that leads to cheaper products and greater access for everyone else, for example, airline travel and cell phones.
Even if global warming was not happening at all (which it is), why discourage new technology that solves pollution problems?
While I'm sure someone is confident global warming isn't happening, that person is not me. And who is discouraging new technology? Among other things, I don't consider the absence of subsidies or poorly thought out research grants to be discouragement.
Two arguments are the considerable error bar on long term temperature forcing of a doubling of CO2 and the consistent exaggeration of global warming by past climate models.
What is the final solution for Laissez-faire capitalism, anyhow?
Funny how all the places which have "final solutions" never bothered with laissez faire capitalism. But sure, let's concern ourselves with this imaginary problem and come up with imaginary solutions. Hmm, how about we just not do the final solution thing? I think that solves the problem nicely.
The poor, the indigent and even the lazy will never disappear form the earth.
So? You're just making an argument for laissez faire with that sort of fatalism. If you can't do anything to change the situation, then doing nothing to change the situation is a valid optimal solution.
'm a pragmatist, that most hated species that knows that unbridled idealism of any sort inevitably leads to failure.
Well, if you really are a pragmatist, shouldn't you be discussing real problems instead of imaginary ones? That seems to be the point of the definition of the word.
The developing world isn't suffering from a concentration of capital? Are you kidding?
Technically, no one is suffering. Concentration of capital is one of those imaginary problems. But no matter, wealth and income inequality are getting better in the developing world.
Typically they disregard how society indirectly provides benefits like a skilled labor pool, infrastructure and other foundations for modern civilization that enabled their company to make millions in profit.
But they don't disregard when society provides boat anchors and albatrosses rather than help. Maybe you shouldn't either.
in the same sense that blind social darwinistic capitalism leads to the inevitable concentration of capital and power in the hands of the few, and everyone else dirt poor. that's the end game of unbridled capitalism. the middle class is continuing to die in the usa because too many idiots don't realize this
Capitalism in the US is very much bridled. It may be a bit less than some European countries, but it's vastly more than the developing world which is not having this concentration of capital problem. The real factor in the stagnation of the middle class's wealth is labor competition with people who work for a small fraction of the cost of the US worker. As a result, wealth derived from labor has declined, while wealth derived from other sources, such as capital, has not.
Two thoughts on this. First, don't make a distinction between people and couples. Personally, I think government should get out of the marriage racket and just provide legal infrastructure for domestic partnerships.
Second, my primary concern with this has always been the moral hazard. $6,000 per year per adult isn't very much so why not vote for politicians who promise to give you more? There's always been a significant portion of the US that just doesn't care about the future or understand economics. While some of those people happen to be rich, a lot more aren't. Getting more basic income is going to be an obvious desire.
In the Alaskan case, we still have that moral hazard, but we also have a natural pushback, namely, the revenue funding this scheme comes from the pipelines, not some nebulous tax revenue or debt that we can make higher at will.
Now, gimme your lunch money and no more words need to be hurt.
Where is this mass of invaders coming from? You are aware that there has been no net immigration from Mexico in the last 5 years.
The US deported over 300k Mexican citizens in 2013.
Even as border apprehensions dropped, deportations of Mexican immigrants reached a record high in 2013 of 314,904, up from 169,031 in 2005. This is due in part to a 2005 shift in policy that has increased the chances of being deported following apprehension in the border region, instead of just being sent back without an order of removal.
They're still trying, but that does seem like the US could be doing something better with its resources than stopping "invaders".
No, sanitizing classified material and releasing unclassified versions is their job. No "go to prison" there.
If they were following relevant law, then that would be correct. These reports suggest the material was not legally sanitized.
We already have something better than plurality voting, but most voters don't bother to utilize it.
[...]
... primaries ...
[...]
The first states vote, and those candidates who do poorly are ignored by voters in other states who vote on later dates, so that they can put their votes where they will make a difference:
[...]
Indeed, even without primaries, we still have pre-election polls which are usually clear enough in telling us who the top two contenders are, and we can simply choose between those two candidates. With no "wasted vote" effect, polls can tell us each candidate's true level of support, since no one has any reason to tell a pollster that they will vote for any candidate other than their favorite, even if they will do so in the election after seeing the incredibly poor poll results for their favorite candidate.
This superior voting mechanism wouldn't happen to be sarcasm, would it? I find your arguments otherwise strangely neutered.
The fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility
is the definition of accountability. Maybe they'll change it next year?
That was an excellent pout. I put it as 9 of 12.
For a start ban fast food drive throughs.
Better ban intersections. There's a lot more cars idling there than at the drive thru,
There are folks who have been accused of crimes so terrible that we have chosen to give up rights in order to incarcerate them for the protection of the rest of society. Your view doesn't include those folks and I'm afraid you're definitely in the minority on this one.
We already have laws and legal processes in place for those people. There's nothing to fix here, except perhaps getting a more competent and professional police force. Due process is a core part of democratic law because it has long been the case that wrongful and unjust punishment is a more serious problem than letting a few murderers go for lack of evidence.
He's not on some public facing list, either.
Even if that were true (it's not since the public can access the list as was noted in the second paragraph of the story), he's still on a list that the police can see and that info can be used against him at a later time.
...except that there's not "a great body of evidence that supports the existence of" their invisible sky daddy. Kindly note the difference between having a great body of evidence but produced by others, and just simple belief of others.
And you know this how?
Do you have such a short memory or an inability to scroll up and see the post of yours that I replied to?
Of course not. I read through my previous posts and didn't see anything.
I am not playing a game here
Even though I don't buy that at all (though I grant you probably think you're not playing a game), I'll point out that at the time I was using an idiom of speech.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that a consumer economy is funded by the consumers?
There's more to an economy than just consumers. By merely using the term "consumer" you imply the existence of producers who produce the goods and services which are consumed by the consumers. Why is it so hard to credit the people who make decisions with the consequences, good and bad, of those decisions?
That the labor and productivity and earnings of people pay all the bills?
Which is tangential to your assertion of a consumer economy. One doesn't speak of the labor, productivity, or earnings of a consumer. A consumer consumes by definition and consumption is not dependent on those things. Producers have those things.
Is this some artifact left over from the supply-side economics of the '80s?
That you even ask that question indicates you have something to unlearn. The consumer economy is an ideologically driven model. I believe it exists precisely for the use you put it to, to denigrate owners of capital.
No exceptions.
Except the real world, of course. Real economies routinely have complex transactions in which the roles of consumer and producer are often indeterminable. For example, what's the good or service consumed in stock trading and who actually consumes it? And mutual production/consumption is not uncommon (eg, bartering manufactured goods or consumables, or a swap of capital equipment for businesses on the move).
Wrong. It was funded by the customers of big bad Pharma.
Customers didn't choose to fund the research, hence, it's not their baby. And are we going to credit the banks too? They fondled that funding a little bit, sometimes between customer and pharma company. Maybe some drug dealers of the illegal sort? Fast food restaurants? ATM machines?
There's a saying that I think applies here. Money has no provenance. It doesn't matter where the money came from. The people who decided to fund the research are the ones who should be credited for funding the research.