If you serve up an advertisement, and require me somehow to accept it if I want your content, that's fine with me. If you serve up your content and insist that I have incurred an obligation of your choosing by requesting it, that's not. That's a distinction I want to make. Note that you can't tell, in the second case, whether I'm trying to get something for free or I'm rejecting ads for other reasons.
The web is in trouble. Up until now, ads have paid for a lot of things. There are hobby websites that are supported by an individual person, and there are commerce websites. Those don't need financial support. There's a lot that are expensive to run and don't actually sell anything (Wikipedia and IMDB come to mind), and that's where ad revenue really matters. There really isn't a good substitute. Microtransactions have been kicked around for a LONG time, and have never become actually useful. There's technological and social problems with them.
Unfortunately, ads have become self-defeating. There's lots of stuff that I simply can't access from my phone, because I'm not dexterous enough to navigate around the ads. There's malware out there, and nobody takes responsibility. I refuse to take the risk. I'm also not going to stop using the web, because it's too important. If a site promises to be reasonable with the ads, and I have some reason to believe it, I can whitelist it in my ad blocker. Other than that, I've got no ideas.
Or anyone else I have no frippin' idea why you think I think that changing ones mind based on additional evidence, discussion, or thought, is a bad idea for anyone. (I can disagree with what people change their minds to without disagreeing with the process.) It doesn't matter whether it's a Clinton or a Bush.
I don't invent words you never wrote. "The proposed cure for Global warming is to massively tax the populace." - your own words, implying that there is precisely one proposed cure. If you don't express yourself well (and I don't always express myself well), it's better to clarify than to argue interpretations.
Please cite this singular proposal given by governments, because I'm not aware of it. There's a general agreement that we have to cut carbon dioxide emissions, no real agreement on how. There is speculation on cutting down on the sunlight reaching the planet, and speculation on how to sequester carbon dioxide. If you bother to look, there's lots of proposals, some more realistic than others. People say "conservatives" (not that I call those people "conservatives") "don't believe in global warming" because they pay attention to what the so-called conservatives say. Some people say that AGW is a problem and that carbon taxes aren't a solution, but typically not those sorts of Republicans.
Your memory of the 1970s differs from mine. People pretty much bought what was available, as they do now, and while they complained about having to pay more they accepted it. I have no idea what you mean by an "investment" to change things that doesn't involve taxes.
Off the top of my head, you missed the other Brazilian battleship, the Sao Paulo. They weren't all that impressive when completed. Brazil had ordered two other battleships in Britain, which Turkey bought, and which the RN took over when WWI started.
What you personally experienced is not relevant for global temperatures. You say that a large area was colder than normal, when the temperature readings showed it somewhat warmer than normal. In what way is it clear that that region has temperatures that are not measured by thermometers?
It's possible to bet on coin flips. If the coin is very slightly biased, it can be lucrative. If I keep making bets at even odds when I've got a 51% chance of winning, I can make a good deal of money in the long run.
In other words, those kind of Republicans don't care about change. The market is a wonderful thing, but it by definition does not account for externalities. If some of the price of burning coal is damage to the planet that other people pay for, the market will not account for that. The government needs to internalize at least some of the costs. I like the idea of carbon taxes, so that the economy can adjust on its own, but I want them to be revenue-neutral, so that other taxes would be reduced.
As far as I can tell, we're going to get dire consequences, and by reducing carbon dioxide emissions now we can make them less dire down the road.
I don't have the delusion that, if the right people get elected, the market will suddenly move to account for externalities, or that progress will push the economy away from such externalities.
Unfortunately, many people are so convinced that global warming isn't happening that they are willing to believe anything else, such as massive complete worldwide conspiracies. I call such people "deniers".
If you want explanations as to why past predictions have been incorrect, I'd suggest saying which predictions. There's lots of reasons why predictions can be incorrect, and many of them are pretty close to being correct. I have no idea why you think gaps go unacknowledged. This is science, and lots of very intelligent people are there to pounce on discrepancies and see if they can find publishable research in them. Computer models are what we've got. It's more of an observational science like astronomy. We aren't going to get control planets and double-blind studies where nobody knows whether they're on the 280ppm planet or the 400ppm planet. We have to do the best we can.
And, yes, I'd like to see the politics separate from the science, but too many people are intent on maligning the science for political gain.
I have no idea which idiots you've been talking to. That said, geoengineering is dangerous in its own right. The Earth we're used to has a certain amount of sunlight hitting it to produce a certain temperature, which is going up. Reducing the temperature is a good goal, but reducing sunlight may have negative consequences in other ways, probably to the ecologies. In other words, we don't know what we'd be doing. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't do it, but we need to be cautious. We really, really don't know what reducing the major heat input would do.
First, I don't know many climate change proponents. Most people are against it, which unfortunately doesn't make it go away.
Second, fossil fuels are going to get used up. There's finite amounts, and it's getting harder to extract them over time. The only way we're going to keep our current standard of living indefinitely is to find new energy sources.
Third, there isn't a group mind trying to direct things. There's lots of people with lots of ideas.
I don't know why there isn't more money spent on fusion power. I'd prefer more. There's prejudice against nuclear reactors, which are quite likely our best long-range source of baseline energy. Renewables are advancing very rapidly. They'll never be a complete solution, but they will buy time to figure out other things.
Um, what's the trekking back and forth to Strassburg? Is that anything like Mecca, aside from being in Europe? Do tens of millions of people travel there and back regularly? If not, it's a trivial contributor to global warming. World population is projected to level off at about ten billion. And how do you expect all those US cities to be remodeled without a very large amount of tax money? Why do you refer to "government", as if there was only one? Can you express yourself more clearly?
The science, like most sciences, has its share of papers that can't be comprehended by people outside the discipline, but the basics are accessible. The fundamental science, that we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air and causing the lower atmosphere to heat up, is pretty darn simple. The change in world climate is pretty obvious when you actually look at it, so you don't need to rely on scientific observations for confirmation. BTW, the agenda most of those people have is somewhere between find out the truth and make a name for themselves, and if it were possible the fastest way to make a reputation would be to find alternative explanations for the heating or even find that there's no heating going on. Scientists are a quarrelsome lot, living all over the world in all sorts of circumstances, and somebody somewhere would do that if they could find science to back them up.
And, yes, if I had such a distorted view of things I'd be skeptical too.
You might want to learn some statistics. If you flip a fair coin once, it'll come up heads or tails and that's unpredictable. Flip one a million times and it's going to be very close to 500K heads. Noisy readings can be averaged to much more accurate results.
Fortunately, then, there isn't a single government institution in charge of climate research, that nobody's losing their job over being wrong, and there's great rewards in store for anyone who can account for AGW in any other way.
I'd like to hear about this [singular] "proposed cure for global warming" you talk about. I thought there were a lot of varied ideas being kicked around, including plans to reflect some sunlight, plans to sequester carbon, and plans to reduce carbon emission in energy production. But, no, you say there's one proposal, and that one's deliberately incomplete.
Given that we are warming up the surface of the planet, with unpleasant results, I'd like to see various different plans get tried, since we're more likely to get results that way. But that's just me.
Empirically, we've had cooler years following hotter years, and climate science hasn't been wiped out yet.
Who do you recommend as disinterested parties? I'm going to nominate people who know what they're doing, and who would be effectively fired if found to be cheating. In other words, climate scientists. I suspect your idea of a "disinterested party" is one that agrees with you and will fudge the data accordingly.
Particularly when you look at MIT research on the effects of tinfoil hats. They concentrate some of the radiation, including some frequencies people think are for mind control. Some people never look at the science behind things.
In other words, you aren't worried about potentially lethal effects of my heart attack and depression, or my brother's cancer? The accident a friend of mine got into? (Actually, a mutual friend counted and said she'd survived eighteen separate things that could have killed you, and was now on her third cats' worth of lives.) How about the accidents that happened to my nephews when they were in their teens?
We're pretty much there, and we don't have many credible horror stories in Western civilization. Besides, we're going to be moving beyond organ donation sometime in the not too distant future, and I don't think it'll have the corrosive effect on society by then. There are experiments in making new organs.
I've been paid by people who cared nothing for me as a person, but only about my hacking code and not upsetting the office. I've been referred to as a "resource" instead of a software guy. This is perfectly normal in my field, and I find myself not entirely sympathetic about complaints about "objectification". I don't see why I shouldn't in general pay money to see nude women (although I strongly disapprove of being disrespectful of them). I pay other people money to produce things to satisfy my fantasies (the helicarrier taking off in Avengers was a prime example); so what's wrong with a fantasy of a couple of beautiful women doing anything I want sexually?
In 2005, I had good reason to think that violent video games might be a very bad thing. Since then, I've seen more of their lack of effects on the crime rate, and I've changed my mind. I don't see why it's news that someone was against a reasonably new and potentially bad thing ten years ago.
I don't find that odd at all. They do something wrong, or at least unpopular and against some religious teaching, get humiliated, and then decide to change their lives. If they then go back to their old ways while keeping up the moral posturing, that's hypocritical and pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the general lack of Pokemon, Pokestops, and gyms in basements, going out and playing Pokemon Go is usually a good thing.
Okay, why do you think that insisting on being able to make an emergency phone call is stupid or evil?
If you serve up an advertisement, and require me somehow to accept it if I want your content, that's fine with me. If you serve up your content and insist that I have incurred an obligation of your choosing by requesting it, that's not. That's a distinction I want to make. Note that you can't tell, in the second case, whether I'm trying to get something for free or I'm rejecting ads for other reasons.
The web is in trouble. Up until now, ads have paid for a lot of things. There are hobby websites that are supported by an individual person, and there are commerce websites. Those don't need financial support. There's a lot that are expensive to run and don't actually sell anything (Wikipedia and IMDB come to mind), and that's where ad revenue really matters. There really isn't a good substitute. Microtransactions have been kicked around for a LONG time, and have never become actually useful. There's technological and social problems with them.
Unfortunately, ads have become self-defeating. There's lots of stuff that I simply can't access from my phone, because I'm not dexterous enough to navigate around the ads. There's malware out there, and nobody takes responsibility. I refuse to take the risk. I'm also not going to stop using the web, because it's too important. If a site promises to be reasonable with the ads, and I have some reason to believe it, I can whitelist it in my ad blocker. Other than that, I've got no ideas.
Got something other than some Youtube video? I hate having to watch them for something that should be well documented in print.
Or anyone else I have no frippin' idea why you think I think that changing ones mind based on additional evidence, discussion, or thought, is a bad idea for anyone. (I can disagree with what people change their minds to without disagreeing with the process.) It doesn't matter whether it's a Clinton or a Bush.
I don't invent words you never wrote. "The proposed cure for Global warming is to massively tax the populace." - your own words, implying that there is precisely one proposed cure. If you don't express yourself well (and I don't always express myself well), it's better to clarify than to argue interpretations.
Please cite this singular proposal given by governments, because I'm not aware of it. There's a general agreement that we have to cut carbon dioxide emissions, no real agreement on how. There is speculation on cutting down on the sunlight reaching the planet, and speculation on how to sequester carbon dioxide. If you bother to look, there's lots of proposals, some more realistic than others. People say "conservatives" (not that I call those people "conservatives") "don't believe in global warming" because they pay attention to what the so-called conservatives say. Some people say that AGW is a problem and that carbon taxes aren't a solution, but typically not those sorts of Republicans.
Your memory of the 1970s differs from mine. People pretty much bought what was available, as they do now, and while they complained about having to pay more they accepted it. I have no idea what you mean by an "investment" to change things that doesn't involve taxes.
There are people who seem to consider the Kardashians as role models.
Off the top of my head, you missed the other Brazilian battleship, the Sao Paulo. They weren't all that impressive when completed. Brazil had ordered two other battleships in Britain, which Turkey bought, and which the RN took over when WWI started.
What you personally experienced is not relevant for global temperatures. You say that a large area was colder than normal, when the temperature readings showed it somewhat warmer than normal. In what way is it clear that that region has temperatures that are not measured by thermometers?
It's possible to bet on coin flips. If the coin is very slightly biased, it can be lucrative. If I keep making bets at even odds when I've got a 51% chance of winning, I can make a good deal of money in the long run.
In other words, those kind of Republicans don't care about change. The market is a wonderful thing, but it by definition does not account for externalities. If some of the price of burning coal is damage to the planet that other people pay for, the market will not account for that. The government needs to internalize at least some of the costs. I like the idea of carbon taxes, so that the economy can adjust on its own, but I want them to be revenue-neutral, so that other taxes would be reduced.
As far as I can tell, we're going to get dire consequences, and by reducing carbon dioxide emissions now we can make them less dire down the road.
I don't have the delusion that, if the right people get elected, the market will suddenly move to account for externalities, or that progress will push the economy away from such externalities.
Unfortunately, many people are so convinced that global warming isn't happening that they are willing to believe anything else, such as massive complete worldwide conspiracies. I call such people "deniers".
If you want explanations as to why past predictions have been incorrect, I'd suggest saying which predictions. There's lots of reasons why predictions can be incorrect, and many of them are pretty close to being correct. I have no idea why you think gaps go unacknowledged. This is science, and lots of very intelligent people are there to pounce on discrepancies and see if they can find publishable research in them. Computer models are what we've got. It's more of an observational science like astronomy. We aren't going to get control planets and double-blind studies where nobody knows whether they're on the 280ppm planet or the 400ppm planet. We have to do the best we can.
And, yes, I'd like to see the politics separate from the science, but too many people are intent on maligning the science for political gain.
I have no idea which idiots you've been talking to. That said, geoengineering is dangerous in its own right. The Earth we're used to has a certain amount of sunlight hitting it to produce a certain temperature, which is going up. Reducing the temperature is a good goal, but reducing sunlight may have negative consequences in other ways, probably to the ecologies. In other words, we don't know what we'd be doing. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't do it, but we need to be cautious. We really, really don't know what reducing the major heat input would do.
First, I don't know many climate change proponents. Most people are against it, which unfortunately doesn't make it go away.
Second, fossil fuels are going to get used up. There's finite amounts, and it's getting harder to extract them over time. The only way we're going to keep our current standard of living indefinitely is to find new energy sources.
Third, there isn't a group mind trying to direct things. There's lots of people with lots of ideas.
I don't know why there isn't more money spent on fusion power. I'd prefer more. There's prejudice against nuclear reactors, which are quite likely our best long-range source of baseline energy. Renewables are advancing very rapidly. They'll never be a complete solution, but they will buy time to figure out other things.
Um, what's the trekking back and forth to Strassburg? Is that anything like Mecca, aside from being in Europe? Do tens of millions of people travel there and back regularly? If not, it's a trivial contributor to global warming. World population is projected to level off at about ten billion. And how do you expect all those US cities to be remodeled without a very large amount of tax money? Why do you refer to "government", as if there was only one? Can you express yourself more clearly?
The science, like most sciences, has its share of papers that can't be comprehended by people outside the discipline, but the basics are accessible. The fundamental science, that we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air and causing the lower atmosphere to heat up, is pretty darn simple. The change in world climate is pretty obvious when you actually look at it, so you don't need to rely on scientific observations for confirmation. BTW, the agenda most of those people have is somewhere between find out the truth and make a name for themselves, and if it were possible the fastest way to make a reputation would be to find alternative explanations for the heating or even find that there's no heating going on. Scientists are a quarrelsome lot, living all over the world in all sorts of circumstances, and somebody somewhere would do that if they could find science to back them up.
And, yes, if I had such a distorted view of things I'd be skeptical too.
You might want to learn some statistics. If you flip a fair coin once, it'll come up heads or tails and that's unpredictable. Flip one a million times and it's going to be very close to 500K heads. Noisy readings can be averaged to much more accurate results.
Fortunately, then, there isn't a single government institution in charge of climate research, that nobody's losing their job over being wrong, and there's great rewards in store for anyone who can account for AGW in any other way.
I'd like to hear about this [singular] "proposed cure for global warming" you talk about. I thought there were a lot of varied ideas being kicked around, including plans to reflect some sunlight, plans to sequester carbon, and plans to reduce carbon emission in energy production. But, no, you say there's one proposal, and that one's deliberately incomplete.
Given that we are warming up the surface of the planet, with unpleasant results, I'd like to see various different plans get tried, since we're more likely to get results that way. But that's just me.
Empirically, we've had cooler years following hotter years, and climate science hasn't been wiped out yet.
Who do you recommend as disinterested parties? I'm going to nominate people who know what they're doing, and who would be effectively fired if found to be cheating. In other words, climate scientists. I suspect your idea of a "disinterested party" is one that agrees with you and will fudge the data accordingly.
Particularly when you look at MIT research on the effects of tinfoil hats. They concentrate some of the radiation, including some frequencies people think are for mind control. Some people never look at the science behind things.
In other words, you aren't worried about potentially lethal effects of my heart attack and depression, or my brother's cancer? The accident a friend of mine got into? (Actually, a mutual friend counted and said she'd survived eighteen separate things that could have killed you, and was now on her third cats' worth of lives.) How about the accidents that happened to my nephews when they were in their teens?
I was born in 1954, you insensitive clod!
We're pretty much there, and we don't have many credible horror stories in Western civilization. Besides, we're going to be moving beyond organ donation sometime in the not too distant future, and I don't think it'll have the corrosive effect on society by then. There are experiments in making new organs.
I've been paid by people who cared nothing for me as a person, but only about my hacking code and not upsetting the office. I've been referred to as a "resource" instead of a software guy. This is perfectly normal in my field, and I find myself not entirely sympathetic about complaints about "objectification". I don't see why I shouldn't in general pay money to see nude women (although I strongly disapprove of being disrespectful of them). I pay other people money to produce things to satisfy my fantasies (the helicarrier taking off in Avengers was a prime example); so what's wrong with a fantasy of a couple of beautiful women doing anything I want sexually?
In 2005, I had good reason to think that violent video games might be a very bad thing. Since then, I've seen more of their lack of effects on the crime rate, and I've changed my mind. I don't see why it's news that someone was against a reasonably new and potentially bad thing ten years ago.
I don't find that odd at all. They do something wrong, or at least unpopular and against some religious teaching, get humiliated, and then decide to change their lives. If they then go back to their old ways while keeping up the moral posturing, that's hypocritical and pathetic.