Why do you refer to climate scientists as "the usual suspects"? It's at least a little reasonable to describe Al Gore like that, but we've seen an entire branch of science being demonized because some people with money and media contacts find it inconvenient.
You know, if you deny AGW as you rob a bank, you're still likely to get convicted of the robbery. If you deliberately lie about something for financial gain, you're probably committing a crime, and it doesn't matter what you're lying about. So, someone who denies AGW while knowing it is happening (deliberately lying) to make more money is committing a criminal act. I'm not sure if it matters whether AGW is happening or not.
In the cases I know of, a corporation had research reports that were believed inside the company saying that AGW was happening, and therefore deliberately lied about it. Tobacco companies were liable because they knew tobacco caused health problems and said it didn't. Nobody was prosecuted for just saying tobacco didn't hurt anyone.
This isn't a case of bad politics. This is a case of a corporation knowing something, which is proven by internal documents, and saying something else for financial gain.
Anyone who knows AGW is going on, and publicly denies it for financial gain, is committing fraud. You can substitute anything else for AGW, such as tobacco causing cancer or asbestos being harmful. Deliberate lies for financial gain are a no-no.
If you don't think AGW is happening, and you say that, you're not committing fraud. To get convicted, the prosecution will have to prove that you knew AGW was happening and lied anyway, and that's difficult. Typically this has been proven by internal corporate documents.
If you deny that AGW is going on because you're stupid or blinkered or can't tell the difference between politics and science, you're not lying and are not violating the law.
In science, today's consensus is usually tomorrow's very good approximation. There are cases where this fails (think Hans Wegener and continental drift or the it's a particle-it's a wave-it's both theories of light), but that's rare.
2014 was measured as the warmest year later by 0.2K (?), with a tolerance of +/- 1K. Mathematically, that's fine. It means we don't have much confidence that 2014 was the warmest year ever, but it's the most likely candidate. Since we're talking about a statistical distribution of a continuous variable, the probability that it was exactly what it was announced as is some form of zero (it gets complicated here, and we have to use some more sophisticated analysis), but the probability density function peaks there.
Be very careful when saying that scientists did something that looks obviously wrong. It may in fact be wrong, since scientists often don't have a good feel for statistics, but the odds are that you don't understand why they're saying what they're saying.
BTW, there's no good evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on Earth, although I consider it unlikely, and there's lots of low-quality evidence of the paranormal. It is easy to find good reasons to support Clinton; I'm not so sure about Trump, although I'd be willing to listen to any.
I've tried asking Christian evangelists what their evidence is, and I really don't get anything back. Some people believe in God because they have experiences where they seem to perceive God, which is not falsifiable but can be personally convincing. I have studied proofs of the existence of God, and have come to the conclusion that they're all fallacious, so there's not much point in studying holy literature looking for proofs.
Lots of people believe in the paranormal or God because of what's basically personal experience that can't be reliably shared. Suppose I'd been convinced of the paranormal by personal experience. I could then tell you about the experience(s), but you'd probably judge that the probability that I'm lying about it or didn't really see what I saw is considerably higher than the probability that I saw what I claimed to.
A carbon tax would mean the market would respond to what would otherwise be externalities, and the market could decide the best way to reduce emissions. I'm all in favor of reductions being done economically.
The slashdot editor who let this through with that summary would have been wiser to post an article discrediting emacs as a useful and relevant editor.
Why would such an article be controversial? Now, if it maligned vim....
This is also a "tragedy of the commons" problem. Suppose that in one scenario I cut my CO2 contribution to the environment to zero (I don't know how) and plant trees. In another, I go out and buy the biggest gas hog I can and drive cross-country all the time, leaving the thermostat in the house at 85 F. As far as global warming goes, the difference between these scenarios is imperceptible. It's necessary for a whole lot of us to cut CO2 emissions to have any effect, and there's always advantages for each individual in not cutting them.
It's difficult to link things to AGW, because what we're seeing is mostly statistical tendencies. There are a few obvious things, like the shrinkage in Arctic sea ice, but a significant change in frequency and intensity of droughts can only be seen over the long run.
Anyone can predict anything. Most of us are lousy at foretelling the future. You seem to be going by sensationalized predictions in the media, which are usually going to be wrong. The predictions that matter are those made by the scientists, which you can easily find. They're a lot more conservative than the media predictions, typically. However, slow changes over decades can turn into disasters.
Where do you get this idea of trillions of dollars being spent on climate research? In one typical year, the US spent less than $1.5 billion on climate research. The US has something like 15% of total world income, so that would suggest no more than $10 billion a year on climate research (probably less, since less wealthy countries probably spend less proportionally on research). It would take two centuries of that to constitute "trillions", and I'm fairly sure that there was a lot less spending on climate research shortly after the end of the Napoleonic wars.
The other argument that annoys me is that there is no correct temperature for the Earth. This is correct, but there is a small range of global temperatures that are correct for the civilization we've built, including buildings, large agricultural infrastructure investment, and adaptation of food crops to certain temperatures at certain latitudes.
The idea that man is soley responsible for climate change is absolutely a fallacious and unscientific idea.
It's conceivably true, so it isn't fallacious. It can be tested, which makes it scientific. It is likely to be wrong, but that's to be found out with empirical evidence.
If the manned capsule can escape the explosion, its ejection system accelerates it almost as fast as the explosion would. I'm not seeing the advantage here. An ejection system is useful in case of fire or some forms of mechanical failure, but not explosions.
Hard as that may to believe, but most working folks can't afford to pay for health care twice, once for the mandatory programs
The references I've seen show it as being surprisingly affordable, and the additional costs provide services above what the standard package is, so it's not paying for health care twice. This is in contrast to the US, where most working folks can't afford to pay for health care once.
Yes, wealth concentrates through political power. Therefore, the antidote to that is to reduce the power of politicians, not to increase it.
Wealth concentrates anyway. A wealthy person is free to figure out how to best invest money for income in the long term, while a poor person has to get money right now. A wealthy person can accumulate capital, unlike a poor person, and use that to attain greater wealth.
That was 19th century Germany; people didn't have any liberties to trade in. Bismarck was paying them off to keep them beholden to his totalitarian regime instead of switching to a different one.
von Bismarck was trying to make Socialism look less attractive. Now, given historical hindsight, you and I realize that a Socialist revolution was not going to be good for freedoms anyway, but it was awfully tempting to lots of people at the time. People did have some freedom then.
The Roman Republic was a slave-holding empire run by a small elite of people; it was never free.
That's a pretty good description of the late Republic, after the concentration of wealth and massive increases in poverty (and it had lots of social unrest). It doesn't apply to the early Republic, which had a lot of inequality but was demographically dominated by free small farmers.
There have been plenty of libertarian and free market societies throughout human history
Name some relatively large ones, and I'll check them out for growing inequality of wealth, increases in poverty, and social unrest.
Relativity didn't explain why radio waves traveled at the speed of light. It was not developed for any near-term applications. It was developed as a response to the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had no practical applications. Quantum mechanics was a way to explain some puzzling results, but didn't do anything useful for some time, nor was it clear what use it was.
Newtonian gravity didn't affect gun accuracy before the very long ranged guns in WWI, for which the difference between an elliptical and a parabolic trajectory mattered. Gravity and air resistance determine the trajectory, but at least through WWII shell trajectories were not calculated from first principles. They fired guns with different elevations at different times, and interpolated to create tables showing the important features of the trajectories. These tables were nearly useless in the Italian mountain fighting, since it was very common for the target to be at a significantly different elevation from the guns.
In all these cases, the physical laws didn't matter at the time for practical purposes. Quantum Mechanics at least explained the black-body radiation problem and some oddities with the photoelectric effect, but wasn't responsible for anything useful for some time.
First, it's not going up that much next year, so current models aren't set up to predict that. Second, most of us don't have direct access to the models. Third, they do have predictions for the next several years (changes from one year to the next are largely statistical noise, but the trends show up over more time), and you can look at them in various places, like the IPCC executive summary. Predictions and models that are published will be followed, and the degree of accuracy will be noted.
Allowing unsubstantiated rumors to destroy someone is simply wrong and that's why things like hearsay are normally kept out of court
In other words, you think Clinton should have given her client substandard representation. That's the issue here. Fortunately, there are new rules that protect rape victims from some of the worst stuff they had to go through.
Clearly, a tablet is not for you. That doesn't mean it's bad for everyone.
My mother-in-law has a lot of trouble with computers. She has no trouble with the low-end Android tablet we gave her, and uses it constantly. She uses more bandwidth than I do, and I thought I was a fairly heavy user.
I wanted a letter-sized screen that I could use in portrait mode easily, to read PDFs (primarily assorted game rules).
There's more people who play casual games than the bigger ones like Call of Duty. If you want to type on the things, you can get a bluetooth keyboard easily enough, and you can detach it easily. Few people program.
The market is likely to converge with part of the laptop market, since the difference between a laptop with touchscreen and a way to get the keyboard out of the way is similar to a tablet with detachable keyboard. That doesn't mean it's dying.
My tablet has a large screen, and is intended as a PDF reader that does some other things not too badly.The Amazon reviews were fun: "The sound sucks! Buy it!" It is one of my lesser-used machines, but it has its role in my life.
I see no reason to think tablets are in a terminal decline, any more than desktops were a while back. They're very useful for some purposes, and people are going to keep buying them, although not in as large numbers as they used to.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you refer to climate scientists as "the usual suspects"? It's at least a little reasonable to describe Al Gore like that, but we've seen an entire branch of science being demonized because some people with money and media contacts find it inconvenient.
You know, if you deny AGW as you rob a bank, you're still likely to get convicted of the robbery. If you deliberately lie about something for financial gain, you're probably committing a crime, and it doesn't matter what you're lying about. So, someone who denies AGW while knowing it is happening (deliberately lying) to make more money is committing a criminal act. I'm not sure if it matters whether AGW is happening or not.
In the cases I know of, a corporation had research reports that were believed inside the company saying that AGW was happening, and therefore deliberately lied about it. Tobacco companies were liable because they knew tobacco caused health problems and said it didn't. Nobody was prosecuted for just saying tobacco didn't hurt anyone.
This isn't a case of bad politics. This is a case of a corporation knowing something, which is proven by internal documents, and saying something else for financial gain.
Anyone who knows AGW is going on, and publicly denies it for financial gain, is committing fraud. You can substitute anything else for AGW, such as tobacco causing cancer or asbestos being harmful. Deliberate lies for financial gain are a no-no.
If you don't think AGW is happening, and you say that, you're not committing fraud. To get convicted, the prosecution will have to prove that you knew AGW was happening and lied anyway, and that's difficult. Typically this has been proven by internal corporate documents.
If you deny that AGW is going on because you're stupid or blinkered or can't tell the difference between politics and science, you're not lying and are not violating the law.
In science, today's consensus is usually tomorrow's very good approximation. There are cases where this fails (think Hans Wegener and continental drift or the it's a particle-it's a wave-it's both theories of light), but that's rare.
2014 was measured as the warmest year later by 0.2K (?), with a tolerance of +/- 1K. Mathematically, that's fine. It means we don't have much confidence that 2014 was the warmest year ever, but it's the most likely candidate. Since we're talking about a statistical distribution of a continuous variable, the probability that it was exactly what it was announced as is some form of zero (it gets complicated here, and we have to use some more sophisticated analysis), but the probability density function peaks there.
Be very careful when saying that scientists did something that looks obviously wrong. It may in fact be wrong, since scientists often don't have a good feel for statistics, but the odds are that you don't understand why they're saying what they're saying.
Like the time when a friend of mine wanted a universal remote control?
BTW, there's no good evidence that alien spacecraft have landed on Earth, although I consider it unlikely, and there's lots of low-quality evidence of the paranormal. It is easy to find good reasons to support Clinton; I'm not so sure about Trump, although I'd be willing to listen to any.
I've tried asking Christian evangelists what their evidence is, and I really don't get anything back. Some people believe in God because they have experiences where they seem to perceive God, which is not falsifiable but can be personally convincing. I have studied proofs of the existence of God, and have come to the conclusion that they're all fallacious, so there's not much point in studying holy literature looking for proofs.
Lots of people believe in the paranormal or God because of what's basically personal experience that can't be reliably shared. Suppose I'd been convinced of the paranormal by personal experience. I could then tell you about the experience(s), but you'd probably judge that the probability that I'm lying about it or didn't really see what I saw is considerably higher than the probability that I saw what I claimed to.
A carbon tax would mean the market would respond to what would otherwise be externalities, and the market could decide the best way to reduce emissions. I'm all in favor of reductions being done economically.
Why would such an article be controversial? Now, if it maligned vim....
This is also a "tragedy of the commons" problem. Suppose that in one scenario I cut my CO2 contribution to the environment to zero (I don't know how) and plant trees. In another, I go out and buy the biggest gas hog I can and drive cross-country all the time, leaving the thermostat in the house at 85 F. As far as global warming goes, the difference between these scenarios is imperceptible. It's necessary for a whole lot of us to cut CO2 emissions to have any effect, and there's always advantages for each individual in not cutting them.
The only problem I have with that idea is that, if it's a real deathmatch, one is likely to survive.
It's difficult to link things to AGW, because what we're seeing is mostly statistical tendencies. There are a few obvious things, like the shrinkage in Arctic sea ice, but a significant change in frequency and intensity of droughts can only be seen over the long run.
Anyone can predict anything. Most of us are lousy at foretelling the future. You seem to be going by sensationalized predictions in the media, which are usually going to be wrong. The predictions that matter are those made by the scientists, which you can easily find. They're a lot more conservative than the media predictions, typically. However, slow changes over decades can turn into disasters.
Where do you get this idea of trillions of dollars being spent on climate research? In one typical year, the US spent less than $1.5 billion on climate research. The US has something like 15% of total world income, so that would suggest no more than $10 billion a year on climate research (probably less, since less wealthy countries probably spend less proportionally on research). It would take two centuries of that to constitute "trillions", and I'm fairly sure that there was a lot less spending on climate research shortly after the end of the Napoleonic wars.
The other argument that annoys me is that there is no correct temperature for the Earth. This is correct, but there is a small range of global temperatures that are correct for the civilization we've built, including buildings, large agricultural infrastructure investment, and adaptation of food crops to certain temperatures at certain latitudes.
It's conceivably true, so it isn't fallacious. It can be tested, which makes it scientific. It is likely to be wrong, but that's to be found out with empirical evidence.
Are you including all taxes or just income taxes? Income taxes are normally progressive, but other taxes aren't.
If the manned capsule can escape the explosion, its ejection system accelerates it almost as fast as the explosion would. I'm not seeing the advantage here. An ejection system is useful in case of fire or some forms of mechanical failure, but not explosions.
Why would Valve do that? I know they're pro-Linux, but not selling hot games to all the Windows gamers is going to cost them money and market share.
The references I've seen show it as being surprisingly affordable, and the additional costs provide services above what the standard package is, so it's not paying for health care twice. This is in contrast to the US, where most working folks can't afford to pay for health care once.
Wealth concentrates anyway. A wealthy person is free to figure out how to best invest money for income in the long term, while a poor person has to get money right now. A wealthy person can accumulate capital, unlike a poor person, and use that to attain greater wealth.
von Bismarck was trying to make Socialism look less attractive. Now, given historical hindsight, you and I realize that a Socialist revolution was not going to be good for freedoms anyway, but it was awfully tempting to lots of people at the time. People did have some freedom then.
That's a pretty good description of the late Republic, after the concentration of wealth and massive increases in poverty (and it had lots of social unrest). It doesn't apply to the early Republic, which had a lot of inequality but was demographically dominated by free small farmers.
Name some relatively large ones, and I'll check them out for growing inequality of wealth, increases in poverty, and social unrest.
Relativity didn't explain why radio waves traveled at the speed of light. It was not developed for any near-term applications. It was developed as a response to the Michelson-Morley experiment, which had no practical applications. Quantum mechanics was a way to explain some puzzling results, but didn't do anything useful for some time, nor was it clear what use it was.
Newtonian gravity didn't affect gun accuracy before the very long ranged guns in WWI, for which the difference between an elliptical and a parabolic trajectory mattered. Gravity and air resistance determine the trajectory, but at least through WWII shell trajectories were not calculated from first principles. They fired guns with different elevations at different times, and interpolated to create tables showing the important features of the trajectories. These tables were nearly useless in the Italian mountain fighting, since it was very common for the target to be at a significantly different elevation from the guns.
In all these cases, the physical laws didn't matter at the time for practical purposes. Quantum Mechanics at least explained the black-body radiation problem and some oddities with the photoelectric effect, but wasn't responsible for anything useful for some time.
First, it's not going up that much next year, so current models aren't set up to predict that. Second, most of us don't have direct access to the models. Third, they do have predictions for the next several years (changes from one year to the next are largely statistical noise, but the trends show up over more time), and you can look at them in various places, like the IPCC executive summary. Predictions and models that are published will be followed, and the degree of accuracy will be noted.
In other words, you think Clinton should have given her client substandard representation. That's the issue here. Fortunately, there are new rules that protect rape victims from some of the worst stuff they had to go through.
Clearly, a tablet is not for you. That doesn't mean it's bad for everyone.
My mother-in-law has a lot of trouble with computers. She has no trouble with the low-end Android tablet we gave her, and uses it constantly. She uses more bandwidth than I do, and I thought I was a fairly heavy user.
I wanted a letter-sized screen that I could use in portrait mode easily, to read PDFs (primarily assorted game rules).
There's more people who play casual games than the bigger ones like Call of Duty. If you want to type on the things, you can get a bluetooth keyboard easily enough, and you can detach it easily. Few people program.
The market is likely to converge with part of the laptop market, since the difference between a laptop with touchscreen and a way to get the keyboard out of the way is similar to a tablet with detachable keyboard. That doesn't mean it's dying.
My tablet has a large screen, and is intended as a PDF reader that does some other things not too badly.The Amazon reviews were fun: "The sound sucks! Buy it!" It is one of my lesser-used machines, but it has its role in my life.
I see no reason to think tablets are in a terminal decline, any more than desktops were a while back. They're very useful for some purposes, and people are going to keep buying them, although not in as large numbers as they used to.