They're a watchdog group whose only agenda is full disclosure and absolute rigor.
I see that you don't know much about the UCS. They're a Left-wing advocacy group whose original goal was to shut down nuclear power. Having largely succeeded at that, they then went on to other left-wing causes.
Unless you can prove they ignore the suppression and misrepresentation of findings only in a very selective way
There's plenty of proof of that out there already. Just Google it.
Their donor's list reads like a Who's Who of the Far Left. And THAT, my friend, is their only agenda. They're not the least bit interested in "full disclosure and absolute rigor", whatever the heck that may mean. They're certainly not interested in "full disclosure" of their agenda!
FTA: Campaigners say that in recent years the White House has been able to censor the work of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration because a Republican congress has been loath to stand up for scientific integrity.
Excuse me, but seventeen percent is not a majority.
Being paid does not make one a paid shill.
I see. One is only a shill if one has facts that are contrary to what YOU want to believe, right?
The 1% of people who deny the scientific facts are all paid by oil companies or others who benefit from keeping the fabricated "controversy" going as long as possible
Prove it. You've made three statements here, all of which are demonstrably false:
Only 1% of "people" (by which I presume you mean atmospheric scientists actively working in the field of climatology) deny the AGW myth;
That "all" of the people who deny the Global Warming Myth are paid by oil companies [which is a very large number of people -- either they're not being paid very much or the oil companies will soon be bankrupt!],
That the fact that there is a great deal of disagreement in the scientific community over the cause(s) of global warming is "fabricated".
You know, few things piss me off more than people who will lie in order to persuade someone. Especially this one:
They are the same "scientists" who were so prominently skeptical about the "inconclusive" science behind smoking being harmful.
Now please show me where Richard Lindzen, either of the Roger Pielkes, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer or any of the dozens of other AGW skeptics has ever weighed in on the subject of smoking.
And someone who will attack the integrity and character of people s/he doesn't even know (i.e., "paid shills" and other rottenness that basically says that the person's views are for sale) REALLY pisses me off.
And right now, you are really getting on my nerves.
...if you can get physical access to the line you can bend it and with the right equipment read all the data off the line without any interruption of the normal service.
Nope. Not with quantum crypto. First, you can't read the data because it destroys the data. Second, it will DEFINITELY interrupt the normal service! (because you've destroyed the data)
There are videos of this being done, where they capture a broadcast on a fiber wire and there is no noticeable difference on the original signal.
You're thinking ordinary fiber-optics. Quantum is a whole different world.
Back then it was a very small minority of scientists making that claim, with very little scientific evidence. The media blew it out of proportion.
Just like today's Global Warming Alarmists.
Every scientistic [sic] agrees, there is tons of evidence, and the only dissenting opinions are those of paid shills.
Absolutely NOT TRUE.
First of all, "every scientistic" does NOT agree (though you haven't stated just what it is that they agree on, I'll assume you're talking about Anthropogenic Global Warming). In fact, the majority do NOT agree.
Second, whether or not they agree is irrelevant. The phrase "scientific consensus" is just as much an oxymoron as "creation science": if there's a consensus, it's not scientific. If it's scientific, it doesn't involve consensus.
Third, the claim that "the only dissenting opinions are those of paid shills" is not only irresponsible, but blatantly offensive. Do you honestly think that by attacking the integrity of any scientist who has ever been paid for zir work, that you can discredit ALL of zir research?
Guess what? The only concurring opinions are ALSO those of paid shills. People don't do scientific research for free. SOMEONE PAYS THEM, all of them.
This kind of ad-hominem attack against any researcher who dissents from the Official Line is one of the most disgusting parts of the whole global warming controversy. As if you can discredit someone's work, no matter how well done, because of who paid for the research.
Global warming is real, and the only reason anyone expends energy denying it is because they don't want to pay to fix it.
No.
First of all, they're not "denying" global warming. That's a strawman erected by the Global Warming Alarmist crowd.
Now the reality. The skeptics are speaking out because the "solution" offered by the Global Warming Alarmists is a cure that is worse than the disease. They won't admit it out front, but what they're really seeking is a cessation of all industrial activity. In other words, sending us back to the 18th Century.
If you think about that for a minute, you'll realize how dangerous their "solution" really is: mass unemployment, starvation and disease. An end to virtually all travel. No more advances in science, especially medical research. And for that matter, no more modern medicine, because all of the above require energy, which is precisely what the Alarmists want to deny us the use of.
Sorry to end a sentence with a preposition. But I hope you get my point.
If you don't believe that FOX news might be spinning one line from the report that has a different meaning in the greater context of the report than you really need a reality check.
Oh, you mean the way all of Fox' competitors did with the Working Group I IPCC report (1990) where they ignored the report itself and focused sensationalism on the report's summary which not only wasn't written by scientists, but actually contradicted the report itself?
THAT, my friend, is how Fox News can get away with claiming to be "fair and balanced", because they really ARE, compared to their competitors.
If you're going to complain about media bias, why not leave the least offender (i.e., Fox News) alone and go after the worst ones?
In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims.
...record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. The trend shows no indication of reversing.
University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."
-- Time, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
Yes, folks, scare stories about global COOLING were all the rage in 1974. Even our old boogeyman, the "tipping point" was there:
Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth's surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
So yes, if it all sounds familiar, it's because you HAVE heard it all before. And it was just as hysterical then as it is now.
So Xen isn't ready for "prime time" yet. Yawn. So what? It's a software kludge that gives low-end (read: "x86") servers a subset of the partitioning capabilities that IBM's Power processors have had for years.
If you want mission-critical reliability, you should be running hardware that is mission-critical reliable. Hint: that ain't Intel.
Spend a little more, get a p-series server, partition it as many ways as you like (actually, I think you're limited to 32 partitions), and run a different OS on each one, if you like. You can run Linux, you can run AIX, you can run all kinds of stuff. You got your virtualization, you got your management tools, it's proven technology, and it runs in hardware.
Actually, the alarmist... predict far worse than that.
Yes. And without ANY evidence whatsoever. In fact, all of the available evidence (which is quite voluminous, since there was a global warming period a thousand years ago when it got a little warmer than it has now) points to a BETTER world.
whether they're right or wrong, it's worth at least paying attention
Yes, and some of us have been paying attention for quite a long time. In my case, for well over thirty years now. And if you're paying attention, then you know that they're lying through their teeth.
They say we're close to the tipping point where we won't be able to reverse the warming process.
They're masturbating. There is no "tipping point" because we have NEVER been able to reverse ANY of the Earth's warming -- or cooling -- processes.
Yeah right. May I remind you that it's the *rich* countries that produce all the CO2?
So what's your point? Of COURSE it's the developed countries that are producing most (not all, as you state above) of the anthropogenic CO2. And your point is...????
It's not like cutting emissions in the US (which is responsible for 25% of the emissions) will cause famine everywhere else in the world.
Oh, of course not. Just because it's the US that is feeding the rest of the world doesn't mean that anyone, anywhere will starve when US farmers are no longer able to get the energy they need to grow their crops.
Idiot. Do you really think that punishing the United States for its success is going to make ANY difference (i.e, more than a few hundredths of a degree) in global temperatures? The only thing rolling back the US to 1970 emissions levels will do is put most of the US out of work. And kill a whole lot of people by starvation in the process.
The levels of 1970 were *much* lower than the levels of 1990....
Ever wonder WHY the year 1970 is such a magic number to the alarmists? WHY do they pick 1970 for a baseline?
It's because if they go back before 1970, you'll see data that invalidates their case. The planet was COOLING from about 1939 to about 1970. While the atmospheric CO2 level was, of course, smoothly increasing.
This is called "cherry-picking [one's] data", and the global warming alarmists engage in it all of the time. They regularly exclude any data that contradict their already-formed conclusions.
Or maybe there isn't a need to *eliminate* carbon dioxide emissions? The current Kyoto treaty only specifies 6% below the levels of 1990 (though it's probably not enough).
Let's try to be honest here, shall we? Try to follow me here....
IF anthropogenic CO2 is causing global warming, THEN it follows that any amount of anthropogenic CO2 is going to have an effect. Simply reducing the rate of increase to that of some arbitrary year in the past isn't going to solve the problem -- it will only delay it.
Therefore, if these people are right, then the only way to solve the problem is to eliminate all anthropogenic emissions. And the people who negotiated Kyoto are quite openly admitting that it's "only a first step" that will have a negligible effect on global temperatures.
But not a negligible effect on the world economy, of course, which is what this is REALLY all about.
I'll answer the rest of your misinformed beliefs in separate posts.
Bruce, I'm not going to argue with your pulling the article from your site. I don't know your editorial rules and it may well be that the article didn't fit your standards. However, the reasons you're giving just don't make sense.
My point is that I could not attribute any sincerity to this writer.
Why not? Because it's his job to communicate to the public? Because it's his job to present little-known facts and ideas that people would not have otherwise known? Do you think he took this job because 1) he needed a job and couldn't find anything else, or 2) he really IS sincere and wanted work that is compatible with his values?
And there are a lot of folks writing on the "pro" side who don't have money in the fight
Uh, yeah, ri-i-i-i-ght. None of those people writing for environmentalist organizations are being paid, are they? And none of said organizations are watching their donation stream, right? And ever since Al Gore cut off federal funding for any climate researcher who doesn't agree with his position on global warming -- none of those climate researchers were the least bit interested in getting PAID for their work, causing a large increase in grant applications that were looking for anthropogenic causes of warming... right?
Almost ALL of the people writing on the "pro" side either have money in the fight, or a political axe to grind.
Maybe, just maybe, we should concentrate on the actual FACTS at hand instead of casting ad-hominem aspersions at the motives of the people who are presenting those facts....
According to Gore, global warming will end it all in 10 years. Yet he felt no need or responsibility to do anything about it when he was a Senator or Vice President.
Actually, he did quite a bit. As Senator, he started this whole global warming hysteria by inviting James Hansen (the NASA scientist who first popularized the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming) to testify to his committee -- and also disinvited a few scientists who were prepared to refute Hansen's findings.
And as Vice President, he made sure that the ONLY climate scientists who got federal funding were those who agreed with his views on global warming....
I fail to see how millions/billions of people could die if we unnecessarily cut on carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps you could enlighten me on that?
Yes.
The only way to eliminate anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere is to roll back human progress to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. No net increases in carbon dioxide means:
NO cars, trains, aircraft or any other kind of powered transportation;
NO electricity. Not even solar, wind or hydro, because --
NO factories, without the energy that manufacturing needs;
Most of modern medicine rolled back to the Eighteenth Century;
And, most importantly, worldwide famine. Billions dead. With a B.
It is simply impossible to feed today's world population with 18th or even 19th Century agricultural technology. Without farm tractors, transportation, and artificial fertilizers (the invention of which prevented the mass die-offs predicted by Malthus), most of Earth's population is pretty much doomed.
And the global warming alarmists want all of this to happen, just to save the earth from warming two tenths of one degree -- which is the worst-case estimate right now of how much of the current warming period is attributable to anthropogenic gases.
Slashdot Mirror
They're a watchdog group whose only agenda is full disclosure and absolute rigor.
I see that you don't know much about the UCS. They're a Left-wing advocacy group whose original goal was to shut down nuclear power. Having largely succeeded at that, they then went on to other left-wing causes.
Unless you can prove they ignore the suppression and misrepresentation of findings only in a very selective way
There's plenty of proof of that out there already. Just Google it.
Their donor's list reads like a Who's Who of the Far Left. And THAT, my friend, is their only agenda. They're not the least bit interested in "full disclosure and absolute rigor", whatever the heck that may mean. They're certainly not interested in "full disclosure" of their agenda!
FTA: Campaigners say that in recent years the White House has been able to censor the work of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration because a Republican congress has been loath to stand up for scientific integrity.
Funny how they never complained when the White House was doing far worse stuff than this under Al Gore...
The Union of Concerned Scientists certainly has no room to talk about "politicized science." They were the ones who invented politicized science.
"In fact, the majority do NOT agree."
Yes they do.
Excuse me, but seventeen percent is not a majority.
Being paid does not make one a paid shill.
I see. One is only a shill if one has facts that are contrary to what YOU want to believe, right?
The 1% of people who deny the scientific facts are all paid by oil companies or others who benefit from keeping the fabricated "controversy" going as long as possible
Prove it. You've made three statements here, all of which are demonstrably false:
You know, few things piss me off more than people who will lie in order to persuade someone. Especially this one:
They are the same "scientists" who were so prominently skeptical about the "inconclusive" science behind smoking being harmful.
Now please show me where Richard Lindzen, either of the Roger Pielkes, Roy Spencer, Fred Singer or any of the dozens of other AGW skeptics has ever weighed in on the subject of smoking.
And someone who will attack the integrity and character of people s/he doesn't even know (i.e., "paid shills" and other rottenness that basically says that the person's views are for sale) REALLY pisses me off.
And right now, you are really getting on my nerves.
Nope. Not with quantum crypto. First, you can't read the data because it destroys the data. Second, it will DEFINITELY interrupt the normal service! (because you've destroyed the data)
There are videos of this being done, where they capture a broadcast on a fiber wire and there is no noticeable difference on the original signal.
You're thinking ordinary fiber-optics. Quantum is a whole different world.
What happens if you splice the line and put a repeater in that also reads the data passing through it?
Uh, Dude, you need to do a little bit of reading on quantum cryptography.
The whole point is that you can't do that. Well you can do it, but... everything goes "poof".
Wrong. Quantum cryptography isn't mathematical at all. And it does not rely on keys.
Back then it was a very small minority of scientists making that claim, with very little scientific evidence. The media blew it out of proportion.
Just like today's Global Warming Alarmists.
Every scientistic [sic] agrees, there is tons of evidence, and the only dissenting opinions are those of paid shills.
Absolutely NOT TRUE.
First of all, "every scientistic" does NOT agree (though you haven't stated just what it is that they agree on, I'll assume you're talking about Anthropogenic Global Warming). In fact, the majority do NOT agree.
Second, whether or not they agree is irrelevant. The phrase "scientific consensus" is just as much an oxymoron as "creation science": if there's a consensus, it's not scientific. If it's scientific, it doesn't involve consensus.
Third, the claim that "the only dissenting opinions are those of paid shills" is not only irresponsible, but blatantly offensive. Do you honestly think that by attacking the integrity of any scientist who has ever been paid for zir work, that you can discredit ALL of zir research?
Guess what? The only concurring opinions are ALSO those of paid shills. People don't do scientific research for free. SOMEONE PAYS THEM, all of them.
This kind of ad-hominem attack against any researcher who dissents from the Official Line is one of the most disgusting parts of the whole global warming controversy. As if you can discredit someone's work, no matter how well done, because of who paid for the research.
You are a fool of the first order.
Vuescan -- absolutely. Blows everything else out of the water.
Nikon LS-9000 -- I'm saving up to buy one now. But it won't work for 4x5 film.
Imacon Flextite -- certainly an excellent scanner, but the cheapest one that will take 4x5 is about $10,000 US.
For amateur use, I'd go with one of the Epson flatbeds. And by all means, buy a copy of Vuescan to drive it.
Global warming is real, and the only reason anyone expends energy denying it is because they don't want to pay to fix it.
No.
First of all, they're not "denying" global warming. That's a strawman erected by the Global Warming Alarmist crowd.
Now the reality. The skeptics are speaking out because the "solution" offered by the Global Warming Alarmists is a cure that is worse than the disease. They won't admit it out front, but what they're really seeking is a cessation of all industrial activity. In other words, sending us back to the 18th Century.
If you think about that for a minute, you'll realize how dangerous their "solution" really is: mass unemployment, starvation and disease. An end to virtually all travel. No more advances in science, especially medical research. And for that matter, no more modern medicine, because all of the above require energy , which is precisely what the Alarmists want to deny us the use of.
Sorry to end a sentence with a preposition. But I hope you get my point.
If you don't believe that FOX news might be spinning one line from the report that has a different meaning in the greater context of the report than you really need a reality check.
Oh, you mean the way all of Fox' competitors did with the Working Group I IPCC report (1990) where they ignored the report itself and focused sensationalism on the report's summary which not only wasn't written by scientists, but actually contradicted the report itself?
THAT, my friend, is how Fox News can get away with claiming to be "fair and balanced", because they really ARE, compared to their competitors.
If you're going to complain about media bias, why not leave the least offender (i.e., Fox News) alone and go after the worst ones?
-- Time, Monday, Jun. 24, 1974
Yes, folks, scare stories about global COOLING were all the rage in 1974. Even our old boogeyman, the "tipping point" was there:
So yes, if it all sounds familiar, it's because you HAVE heard it all before. And it was just as hysterical then as it is now.
Here's the full article:
http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time_AnotherIce Age_June241974.pdf
Mod parent up!
So Xen isn't ready for "prime time" yet. Yawn. So what? It's a software kludge that gives low-end (read: "x86") servers a subset of the partitioning capabilities that IBM's Power processors have had for years.
If you want mission-critical reliability, you should be running hardware that is mission-critical reliable. Hint: that ain't Intel.
Spend a little more, get a p-series server, partition it as many ways as you like (actually, I think you're limited to 32 partitions), and run a different OS on each one, if you like. You can run Linux, you can run AIX, you can run all kinds of stuff. You got your virtualization, you got your management tools, it's proven technology, and it runs in hardware.
"Quick, think of the largest object you can imagine ... galaxies and large bubbles of gas...."
Michael Moore.
"One hundred million dollars!"
Actually, the alarmist ... predict far worse than that.
Yes. And without ANY evidence whatsoever. In fact, all of the available evidence (which is quite voluminous, since there was a global warming period a thousand years ago when it got a little warmer than it has now) points to a BETTER world.
whether they're right or wrong, it's worth at least paying attention
Yes, and some of us have been paying attention for quite a long time. In my case, for well over thirty years now. And if you're paying attention, then you know that they're lying through their teeth.
They say we're close to the tipping point where we won't be able to reverse the warming process.
They're masturbating. There is no "tipping point" because we have NEVER been able to reverse ANY of the Earth's warming -- or cooling -- processes.
Yeah right. May I remind you that it's the *rich* countries that produce all the CO2?
So what's your point? Of COURSE it's the developed countries that are producing most (not all, as you state above) of the anthropogenic CO2. And your point is...????
It's not like cutting emissions in the US (which is responsible for 25% of the emissions) will cause famine everywhere else in the world.
Oh, of course not. Just because it's the US that is feeding the rest of the world doesn't mean that anyone, anywhere will starve when US farmers are no longer able to get the energy they need to grow their crops.
Idiot. Do you really think that punishing the United States for its success is going to make ANY difference (i.e, more than a few hundredths of a degree) in global temperatures? The only thing rolling back the US to 1970 emissions levels will do is put most of the US out of work. And kill a whole lot of people by starvation in the process.
The levels of 1970 were *much* lower than the levels of 1990....
Ever wonder WHY the year 1970 is such a magic number to the alarmists? WHY do they pick 1970 for a baseline?
It's because if they go back before 1970, you'll see data that invalidates their case. The planet was COOLING from about 1939 to about 1970. While the atmospheric CO2 level was, of course, smoothly increasing.
This graph says it all. Context here.
This is called "cherry-picking [one's] data", and the global warming alarmists engage in it all of the time. They regularly exclude any data that contradict their already-formed conclusions.
That isn't science. It's propaganda.
Or maybe there isn't a need to *eliminate* carbon dioxide emissions? The current Kyoto treaty only specifies 6% below the levels of 1990 (though it's probably not enough).
Let's try to be honest here, shall we? Try to follow me here....
IF anthropogenic CO2 is causing global warming, THEN it follows that any amount of anthropogenic CO2 is going to have an effect. Simply reducing the rate of increase to that of some arbitrary year in the past isn't going to solve the problem -- it will only delay it.
Therefore, if these people are right, then the only way to solve the problem is to eliminate all anthropogenic emissions. And the people who negotiated Kyoto are quite openly admitting that it's "only a first step" that will have a negligible effect on global temperatures.
But not a negligible effect on the world economy, of course, which is what this is REALLY all about.
I'll answer the rest of your misinformed beliefs in separate posts.
Bruce, I'm not going to argue with your pulling the article from your site. I don't know your editorial rules and it may well be that the article didn't fit your standards. However, the reasons you're giving just don't make sense.
My point is that I could not attribute any sincerity to this writer.
Why not? Because it's his job to communicate to the public? Because it's his job to present little-known facts and ideas that people would not have otherwise known? Do you think he took this job because 1) he needed a job and couldn't find anything else, or 2) he really IS sincere and wanted work that is compatible with his values?
And there are a lot of folks writing on the "pro" side who don't have money in the fight
Uh, yeah, ri-i-i-i-ght. None of those people writing for environmentalist organizations are being paid, are they? And none of said organizations are watching their donation stream, right? And ever since Al Gore cut off federal funding for any climate researcher who doesn't agree with his position on global warming -- none of those climate researchers were the least bit interested in getting PAID for their work, causing a large increase in grant applications that were looking for anthropogenic causes of warming... right?
Almost ALL of the people writing on the "pro" side either have money in the fight, or a political axe to grind.
Maybe, just maybe, we should concentrate on the actual FACTS at hand instead of casting ad-hominem aspersions at the motives of the people who are presenting those facts....
According to Gore, global warming will end it all in 10 years. Yet he felt no need or responsibility to do anything about it when he was a Senator or Vice President.
Actually, he did quite a bit. As Senator, he started this whole global warming hysteria by inviting James Hansen (the NASA scientist who first popularized the concept of Anthropogenic Global Warming) to testify to his committee -- and also disinvited a few scientists who were prepared to refute Hansen's findings.
And as Vice President, he made sure that the ONLY climate scientists who got federal funding were those who agreed with his views on global warming....
Because they never cite any actual published studies that we can rebutt.
Well, if you can't rebut the published studies... maybe it's time for you to change your opinion?
I've my own doubts about global warming, but it does seem that the "con" side are often folks who are paid to have those opinions.
And the "pro" side are also often folks who are paid to have those opinions.
And your point is....??
I fail to see how millions/billions of people could die if we unnecessarily cut on carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps you could enlighten me on that?
Yes.
The only way to eliminate anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere is to roll back human progress to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. No net increases in carbon dioxide means:
It is simply impossible to feed today's world population with 18th or even 19th Century agricultural technology. Without farm tractors, transportation, and artificial fertilizers (the invention of which prevented the mass die-offs predicted by Malthus), most of Earth's population is pretty much doomed.
And the global warming alarmists want all of this to happen, just to save the earth from warming two tenths of one degree -- which is the worst-case estimate right now of how much of the current warming period is attributable to anthropogenic gases.