All of this grading on a curve, never failing anybody for real, this is all causing quality to suffer, but it doesn't reflect in any way on the number of attendants, and the reason is that loans are guaranteed.
If this was about the money, colleges would absolutely fail students, to keep them in their school longer and paying them money without even needing additional courses -- they can just take the same one again! My school certainly still failed people, and teachers that graded on a curve did so to spread things out a little so the variance was more visible -- it didn't actually reflect on the official recorded grade (if it had, more people would have gone down than up).
Not exactly. I'm saying people will assume that the science was politicized if it is first told to them from a biased source. That the science at the very least appeared to be politicized before most people heard of it, so anyone joining in late (and that would be pretty much any time in the last 2 decades, at least) would be justified in being skeptical. If your introduction to "Hey, this Global Warming thing is a problem" was a campaign speech by Al Gore, you're going to go in assuming he's twisting the science (politicians do that). If it was from Greenpeace or another similar environmental group, again, the skeptic will assume they are twisting the facts to suit their agenda, not that their agenda just happens to line up with the facts.
Only 1 and 3 really matter -- 2 is just a useful data point for how to correct things.
1) Global Warming is occurring. That's what this research is showing. 3) This warming will cause large problems. Every model that includes and significant global temperature increase includes a loss of Polar Ice. While that's not terrible for the Arctic (floating ice won't cause any significant changes in sea level) the Antarctic, where it is all on land, will cause sea levels to rise. That will cause considerable economic distress and the coasts are flooded. Given that coasts are the most highly populated regions, that future cost will quite likely be significantly more than the costs of correcting things now. Additional issues (e.g. changes in various weather patterns and local climates that change where the good farming is done) are also included in every model. No one in the field seems to dispute that changes will occur, and that they will be fairly major, it's just not well defined as to what will change specifically.
So handling that part of things...
If man didn't cause it, but it is natural, why exactly do we need to fix it?
We need to fix it because even if it is natural, humans aren't evolved to live in those climates, and it'll cause lots of problems for us. If we are having an effect, it's easier for us to modify our behavior somewhat to correct the course -- the cost is, relatively speaking, low. Moving the entirety of New York City 50 miles inland and a couple hundred feet up is going to cost more alone than reducing carbon emissions and doing some basic environmental preservation. Now multiply that by every major coastal city in the world.
What scares me more is if AGW is wrong -- if we aren't responsible as our impact is minimal, then we'll need to take much greater measures to course correct and maintain the climate we have now, the one that's actually decently habitable for frail human forms.
The skepticism was relatively well justified in the face of the politicization of the science, and the various agenda-driven reports with butchered statistics that came after. The science behind it, which was sound, was carried on and amplified to the public by those who... are known to bend the truth to fit their goals. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, you know. So I wouldn't say the skepticism was wrong, as long as it was applied equally to all reports. The conclusions possibly drawn from that skepticism may have been wrong, but once all objections have been appropriately handled, if the data still stands up, a good skeptic will accept it and move on. It sounds like this one might have just done that.
Star Trek has a couple shows with Lawyers (of sorts). There was at least one on whether Data was considered a member of Starfleet, or the property of Starfleet (granted, it used Riker as the Lawyer). Another if you consider Q's trial of humanity (though I don't recall it having lawyers, per se, unless Picard could be considered humanity's lawyer). Hmm, it appears there are several others...
If there hadn't been reforestation, there wouldn't have been as many trees to cut down.
Look, good lumber can come from a 20 year growth of forest. Columbus (and all the others) land in various spots. Diseases start to spread, the native population is nearly annihilated. Colonies start to spring up along the coast, but that isn't until 100 years later that any real colonies show up (plenty of time for re-forestation to have happened), and serious in-land exploration and settlement doesn't happen for another 300 years (at least -- 1800 for the Lewis & Clark Expedition through mostly "unexplored wilderness"). Sure there was some logging along the coast for the initial colonies, but vast swaths of North and South America were left pretty much untouched by both Native American and European for a solid 300 years in the middle.
If Google (specifically Google Maps) can do it, then yes, it could do any of those since that's what Navigate will use. Feel free to experiment with those (possibly replacing "here" with an actual location since you might not have GPS available to provide that information otherwise) on Google Maps and see what it shows. From my previous use of those sorts of questions, it can certainly do most of what you actually want, though you might need to modify your language slightly to conform to a search engine a bit better. Then again, Google has gotten much better at language processing, so maybe you won't...
With WiFi- or Network-controlled thermostats available, and the assumption that iPhone apps will be able to tap into Siri in some fashion (if they can't, the tech loses a great deal of potential value), that shouldn't actually be particularly hard to manage even if Apple doesn't make the thermostat.
Like a slightly more military version of the Boy Scouts, and heavily encouraged to turn in anyone that spoke out against the Reich (including family members).
Because they were at least no worse than any of the others at the time I needed an institution to handle Direct Deposit, much better than some, had branches in the places I would be doing business (in multiple states), and they still aren't charging me personally any direct fees at all. I have never used my Debit card except as an ATM card, so I won't get this fee either.
I personally like their website (which works most of the time for me - though it is down on occasion, and it wouldn't surprise me to find it was not as reliable as some other banks). Setting up the automatic bill pay for my credit card was pretty easy, but the main reason I've stuck with them is they also have a pretty neat system called ShopSafe. It allows me to generate temporary credit card numbers for online transactions. Those numbers have user-defined caps to how much they'll allow to be charged on them, and will only work at the first site that charges them. I do most of my major purchases online, so it's a good method for managing that side of things.
Should they move into charging me fees for things I actually use, I will look into other banks, but at the moment there's no driving need for me to switch. As a temporary storage point for my money before I move it to other investments, it does the job it needs to. If someone happens to know of another bank that has a system like ShopSafe, has branches (or an appropriate alliance) across the United States, and is better, I'll be happy to take a look. Until then, I'd say my choice is reasoned and rational given the information at hand and my personal needs. If you'd like to consider that being a moron, I suppose that's your prerogative.
Apparently all over the place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault
If the fleet were converted, and the grid wasn't massively expanded, you would just end up with all the petrol being burned in power stations anyway, although with the state of the current fleet that might not be much of an efficiency loss.
From my understanding of the efficiency of a fixed-site oil-burning large-scale electric generator vs. a vehicles ICE, this would be a significant efficiency gain even if it were still burning petrol. From a foot note here:
Electrical energy is created by burning fossil fuels in a power plant at 40% efficiency, followed by transmitting it to your house at 93% efficiency, and using it in an electric vehicle at 92% efficiency, providing a total efficiency of around 34% for an electric vehicle. Crude oil refineries operate at 75% efficiency, and gasoline distribution might cause another 6% energy loss. Since internal combustion engines are only 20% efficient, total efficiency would be around 14%. Assuming that the natural gas and oil to power our vehicles comes from the same well, we can directly compare these efficiencies, and thus conclude that electric vehicles are significantly more efficient.
Even if we have a direct and measurable impact, and heck, even if we could focus our impact to whatever intended ends we wanted at a moment's notice, we couldn't come close the the impact necessary to counteract every other natural climate change driver.
With Solar Shades and Mirrors, or various other direct-control technologies that have been proposed and are entirely within our current capabilities -- yes, we probably could counteract every natural climate change driver. But we don't really need to do that -- just counteract our own accidental actions, and tweak things enough to maintain the general balance.
Want to convince me we can control the climate? Develop a technology that can dissipate a Cat 4 hurricane in a single day.
You are conflating Climate (general average rainfalls and weather patterns over a period of years) with Weather (day-to-day and month-to-month specifics). Weather control is very different from climate control. We might be able to reduce the chances for major hurricanes developing, for example, with climate control, but once one is started, it would take... hmmm... actually, it would take landfall to dissipate it in about a day. We may already have that technology, just not the capability or insanity required to deploy it. If I remember my basic Earth Science, Hurricanes run off evaporation cycles from the ocean. A sufficiently large tarp deployed across the surface of the ocean could probably do the trick (and have several other unknown but probably bad consequences).
Anyway... point being, I'm not talking about controlling the weather, or even making serious attempts to control the climate fully -- just stop the present changes we're already making. Already there on use of more efficient and renewable energy - heck, I already bike everywhere instead of drive, and there's very little that's more efficient than that.
Control? Certainly not. If we did, Global Climate Change wouldn't be a problem, it would simply be something we managed.
A direct and measurable impact upon? Yes, absolutely.
It's not that I don't think the natural world is incapable of changing climates, or that I don't think there may be additional sources of climate change -- it's that I like the climate we have right now, and I have a vested interest in maintaining it. If I were an unselfish "Save Life On Earth" or even a pure PETA-style "Environmentalist" hippy, I'd be perfectly happy to let things go -- humans wipe themselves out, life as a whole continues perfectly fine without us. I'm not those things -- I want to save the environment for very selfish reasons: to enjoy it myself; to ensure my descendants have a planet which is conducive to their continued survival; to maintain the status quo (in some sense) because while humans are perfectly happy in the current climate, any minor adjustment up or down probably wouldn't be anywhere near so pleasant.
Unless that home was bought this year, and it was the first house purchased. Or that home is being used as collateral for a loan. Or that home is being used as a tax-shelter for re-directing gifts and income in a tax-free fashion (via the 14-day tax-free rental income clause).
Slashdot Mirror
All of this grading on a curve, never failing anybody for real, this is all causing quality to suffer, but it doesn't reflect in any way on the number of attendants, and the reason is that loans are guaranteed.
If this was about the money, colleges would absolutely fail students, to keep them in their school longer and paying them money without even needing additional courses -- they can just take the same one again! My school certainly still failed people, and teachers that graded on a curve did so to spread things out a little so the variance was more visible -- it didn't actually reflect on the official recorded grade (if it had, more people would have gone down than up).
Not exactly. I'm saying people will assume that the science was politicized if it is first told to them from a biased source. That the science at the very least appeared to be politicized before most people heard of it, so anyone joining in late (and that would be pretty much any time in the last 2 decades, at least) would be justified in being skeptical. If your introduction to "Hey, this Global Warming thing is a problem" was a campaign speech by Al Gore, you're going to go in assuming he's twisting the science (politicians do that). If it was from Greenpeace or another similar environmental group, again, the skeptic will assume they are twisting the facts to suit their agenda, not that their agenda just happens to line up with the facts.
Try searching for Kevin Smith and Clerks first. Or just read this: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/clerks5.html
Only 1 and 3 really matter -- 2 is just a useful data point for how to correct things.
1) Global Warming is occurring. That's what this research is showing.
3) This warming will cause large problems. Every model that includes and significant global temperature increase includes a loss of Polar Ice. While that's not terrible for the Arctic (floating ice won't cause any significant changes in sea level) the Antarctic, where it is all on land, will cause sea levels to rise. That will cause considerable economic distress and the coasts are flooded. Given that coasts are the most highly populated regions, that future cost will quite likely be significantly more than the costs of correcting things now. Additional issues (e.g. changes in various weather patterns and local climates that change where the good farming is done) are also included in every model. No one in the field seems to dispute that changes will occur, and that they will be fairly major, it's just not well defined as to what will change specifically.
So handling that part of things...
If man didn't cause it, but it is natural, why exactly do we need to fix it?
We need to fix it because even if it is natural, humans aren't evolved to live in those climates, and it'll cause lots of problems for us. If we are having an effect, it's easier for us to modify our behavior somewhat to correct the course -- the cost is, relatively speaking, low. Moving the entirety of New York City 50 miles inland and a couple hundred feet up is going to cost more alone than reducing carbon emissions and doing some basic environmental preservation. Now multiply that by every major coastal city in the world.
What scares me more is if AGW is wrong -- if we aren't responsible as our impact is minimal, then we'll need to take much greater measures to course correct and maintain the climate we have now, the one that's actually decently habitable for frail human forms.
The skepticism was relatively well justified in the face of the politicization of the science, and the various agenda-driven reports with butchered statistics that came after. The science behind it, which was sound, was carried on and amplified to the public by those who... are known to bend the truth to fit their goals. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, you know. So I wouldn't say the skepticism was wrong, as long as it was applied equally to all reports. The conclusions possibly drawn from that skepticism may have been wrong, but once all objections have been appropriately handled, if the data still stands up, a good skeptic will accept it and move on. It sounds like this one might have just done that.
You mean the universities using Government grants to fund their research?
Star Trek has a couple shows with Lawyers (of sorts). There was at least one on whether Data was considered a member of Starfleet, or the property of Starfleet (granted, it used Riker as the Lawyer). Another if you consider Q's trial of humanity (though I don't recall it having lawyers, per se, unless Picard could be considered humanity's lawyer). Hmm, it appears there are several others...
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Lawyer
Is it? I've been using the on-screen zoom slider for it. I'd imagine the iPhone does the same.
I counter with this.
If there hadn't been reforestation, there wouldn't have been as many trees to cut down.
Look, good lumber can come from a 20 year growth of forest. Columbus (and all the others) land in various spots. Diseases start to spread, the native population is nearly annihilated. Colonies start to spring up along the coast, but that isn't until 100 years later that any real colonies show up (plenty of time for re-forestation to have happened), and serious in-land exploration and settlement doesn't happen for another 300 years (at least -- 1800 for the Lewis & Clark Expedition through mostly "unexplored wilderness"). Sure there was some logging along the coast for the initial colonies, but vast swaths of North and South America were left pretty much untouched by both Native American and European for a solid 300 years in the middle.
Population is 33% error (60 + or - 20).
Carbon Sequestration would be ~79%, I guess (9.5 + or - 7.5).
If Google (specifically Google Maps) can do it, then yes, it could do any of those since that's what Navigate will use. Feel free to experiment with those (possibly replacing "here" with an actual location since you might not have GPS available to provide that information otherwise) on Google Maps and see what it shows. From my previous use of those sorts of questions, it can certainly do most of what you actually want, though you might need to modify your language slightly to conform to a search engine a bit better. Then again, Google has gotten much better at language processing, so maybe you won't...
With WiFi- or Network-controlled thermostats available, and the assumption that iPhone apps will be able to tap into Siri in some fashion (if they can't, the tech loses a great deal of potential value), that shouldn't actually be particularly hard to manage even if Apple doesn't make the thermostat.
Quite possibly: http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/
Did you miss the iPhone and iPad somehow?
I suspect that was a reference to the "Hitler Jugend", not Hitler himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth
Like a slightly more military version of the Boy Scouts, and heavily encouraged to turn in anyone that spoke out against the Reich (including family members).
This seems somewhere relevant here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/10/1024591/-99:-A-Warning-to-OWS-and-the-Rest-of-Us
I think he's also wrongly assuming that members of Congress write laws, rather than their aides and staff.
Because they were at least no worse than any of the others at the time I needed an institution to handle Direct Deposit, much better than some, had branches in the places I would be doing business (in multiple states), and they still aren't charging me personally any direct fees at all. I have never used my Debit card except as an ATM card, so I won't get this fee either.
I personally like their website (which works most of the time for me - though it is down on occasion, and it wouldn't surprise me to find it was not as reliable as some other banks). Setting up the automatic bill pay for my credit card was pretty easy, but the main reason I've stuck with them is they also have a pretty neat system called ShopSafe. It allows me to generate temporary credit card numbers for online transactions. Those numbers have user-defined caps to how much they'll allow to be charged on them, and will only work at the first site that charges them. I do most of my major purchases online, so it's a good method for managing that side of things.
Should they move into charging me fees for things I actually use, I will look into other banks, but at the moment there's no driving need for me to switch. As a temporary storage point for my money before I move it to other investments, it does the job it needs to. If someone happens to know of another bank that has a system like ShopSafe, has branches (or an appropriate alliance) across the United States, and is better, I'll be happy to take a look. Until then, I'd say my choice is reasoned and rational given the information at hand and my personal needs. If you'd like to consider that being a moron, I suppose that's your prerogative.
In what part of 'NO LAW' do you find nuance?
Apparently all over the place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perjury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault
So... the Pinto?
If the fleet were converted, and the grid wasn't massively expanded, you would just end up with all the petrol being burned in power stations anyway, although with the state of the current fleet that might not be much of an efficiency loss.
From my understanding of the efficiency of a fixed-site oil-burning large-scale electric generator vs. a vehicles ICE, this would be a significant efficiency gain even if it were still burning petrol. From a foot note here:
Even if we have a direct and measurable impact, and heck, even if we could focus our impact to whatever intended ends we wanted at a moment's notice, we couldn't come close the the impact necessary to counteract every other natural climate change driver.
With Solar Shades and Mirrors, or various other direct-control technologies that have been proposed and are entirely within our current capabilities -- yes, we probably could counteract every natural climate change driver. But we don't really need to do that -- just counteract our own accidental actions, and tweak things enough to maintain the general balance.
Want to convince me we can control the climate? Develop a technology that can dissipate a Cat 4 hurricane in a single day.
You are conflating Climate (general average rainfalls and weather patterns over a period of years) with Weather (day-to-day and month-to-month specifics). Weather control is very different from climate control. We might be able to reduce the chances for major hurricanes developing, for example, with climate control, but once one is started, it would take... hmmm... actually, it would take landfall to dissipate it in about a day. We may already have that technology, just not the capability or insanity required to deploy it. If I remember my basic Earth Science, Hurricanes run off evaporation cycles from the ocean. A sufficiently large tarp deployed across the surface of the ocean could probably do the trick (and have several other unknown but probably bad consequences).
Anyway... point being, I'm not talking about controlling the weather, or even making serious attempts to control the climate fully -- just stop the present changes we're already making. Already there on use of more efficient and renewable energy - heck, I already bike everywhere instead of drive, and there's very little that's more efficient than that.
Control? Certainly not. If we did, Global Climate Change wouldn't be a problem, it would simply be something we managed.
A direct and measurable impact upon? Yes, absolutely.
It's not that I don't think the natural world is incapable of changing climates, or that I don't think there may be additional sources of climate change -- it's that I like the climate we have right now, and I have a vested interest in maintaining it. If I were an unselfish "Save Life On Earth" or even a pure PETA-style "Environmentalist" hippy, I'd be perfectly happy to let things go -- humans wipe themselves out, life as a whole continues perfectly fine without us. I'm not those things -- I want to save the environment for very selfish reasons: to enjoy it myself; to ensure my descendants have a planet which is conducive to their continued survival; to maintain the status quo (in some sense) because while humans are perfectly happy in the current climate, any minor adjustment up or down probably wouldn't be anywhere near so pleasant.
Unless that home was bought this year, and it was the first house purchased. Or that home is being used as collateral for a loan. Or that home is being used as a tax-shelter for re-directing gifts and income in a tax-free fashion (via the 14-day tax-free rental income clause).