I may be biased but I think the proportional system and mandatory voting gives a more balanced representation of what people want (or at least what they think they want) and since full control of both houses is quite rare it certainly forces the majors to compromise with the minors. However as with the case of Mr 2% it can also amplify the occasional fringe dwelling extremist voice way out of proportion, that outcome is most likely when the majors use their preferences as weapons against a strong third party such as the greens.
The current labor government is a single party left wing government but the conservative governments we have had in the past were actually a coalition of two parties, the nationals and the liberals. In effect we have three parties acting as the two majors, a strong third party in the greens, and a few oddballs with one or two seats.
You're both right. The GP is using the terms "government" and "govern" as they are commonly understood in the westminster system.
The term "being in government" in the westminster systems means you have enough MP's on your side to "form government". The party or coalition that forms government gets to pick one of their MP's to be the prime minister who in turn gets to pick the cabinet ministers. Only the MP's who belong to the party or coalition of parties that formed government are said to "govern", all other MP's are said to be in opposition and are refered to simply as "the opposition" or sometimes the "government in waiting".
The opposition have a leader (obstensibly the alternative PM), and a "shadow cabinet" composed of "shadow ministers". However the structure of the opposition gets a little complicated when there are minor parties involved. For example a minor opposition party may be more closely aligned with the government than with the opposition even though they are said to be in opposition, ie: they have their own minor opposition leader, etc.
Having been brought up in the westminster system it took me a long time to understand how the US system works and what the hell americans were talking about. I now have a reasonable understanding of the republican form of government and although there are a lot of similarities there are also major differences both in form and terminology.
For example there is no such thing as a lame duck prime minister, a bi-election for a single seat could theoretically cause a similar situation in the westminster system but it would then be called a change of government and the opposition leader would become the PM. The analogy the GP drew with congress and the presidency also makes sense when looked at from a westminster POV.
Here in Oz the recent state election in Tasmania resulted in a hung parlimet neither major party can form a government alone, that has put the greens in a very powerfull position. They also frequently hold the balance of power in the federal senate even though they only have a few senators.
Not sure about the UK system but the Aussie system of proportinal voting means that even though a candidate may only get a few percent of the vote in an election they also get to direct those votes to their prefered competitor. This means an independent or a single issue party candidate can influence the policy of the the major parties even before the election is held by promising to direct thier preference to the opponent who comes closest to their own policy.
However such "preference deals" as they are called can end up having really wierd results. Senator Fielding (IMHO the real villan behind the Aussie censorship trails) actually only got 2% of the primary vote for his seat (thus his nickname of Mr 2%) However due to the way the major parties cut their prefernce deals (attempted to prevent each other and the greens from winning) Fielding won the seat on preferences.
Under some circumstances Fielding can hold the balance of power in the senate. The infamous Conroy bought Fielding's senate vote on other more important legislation by setting up the censorship trials. Fielding recently worked out he had been screwed when his own anti-abortion sponsors turned up on the proposed blacklist. Conroy is now just going through the motions and the bill will die a natural death before the next election when Fielding will be looking for another job.
This is the way Aussie politicians from the two major parties deal with nutter's. The opposition who are promising to vote down the censorship bill in the senate are the same people who were promoting a similar bill for similar reason when they were in gonvernment. Conversly the same people who are in government now and promoting the bill voted down the previous bill when in opposition.
I'm not trying to defend Conroy personally (I believe the "other side" did the same thing) but as far as the filter goes I belive his intention from the start was to get Fielding's (and Xenophon's) vote in the senate and then kill the filter by being fully in favour of it.
Of course my theory about the internet filter is just informed speculation but being in government is not the same as being "the boss", politics is above all else the art of compromise and the application of influence. By forming a single issue political party the pirates at least have a voice even if they never get a representative into parliment.
Not picking on you personally but will you people stop calling them "pipes", anyone with half a clue about the interwebs knows they are called "tubes".
"This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting."
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
"the great population boogeyman of neo-Malthusians"
Ahhh, now I see. You have accepted the Catholic churches character assination of someone who dared to draw a comparison between human and animal populations. Someone who had the audacity to think humans are limited not by god's will but by available resources. No wonder you have no problems with humans wiping out the food chain, god will lift you up to heaven before the shit hits the fan, right?
Why do you think it's a binary choice between the sixth great extinction and "freezing the biosphere"? If you can't see the wisdom in avoiding actions that increase that rate of extinction to a point where your own species is in imminent danger of extinction then you are no more intelligent than a batch of fermenting yeast in a sealed container.
Why do think that is at all relevant to the problem of over fishing? How do past extinction events justify the gross stupidity of destroying the food chain on which we all depend? Following your rationale to it's logical conclusion would imply you have no problems if someone tasered you to death becuase plenty of people have been killed by lightning in the past.
I lived in Oz for half a century, modern Australian society is more open and transparent than it has ever been. The "kooky stories about oppressive laws, internet filtering, censorship, etc", are mostly industrial strength bullshit surrounding a half truth. The only reason many of these stories exist is because Murdoch does not approve of our current government.
"Why were the IPCC's predictions for 2000-2010 so very far off ? (actual temperatures close to 3 standard deviations from predicted values, meaning the chances of those predictions being correct are less than one in a million). Of course no doubt the rest of their prediction, which hasn't changed in response to this embarassing fuckup, are much better, right ?And why don't you answer the question why this embarassing total failure of prediction has not resulted in a reversal of policy ?"
What's embarrasing is your uncited use of the cherry picked drivel put out by Roger Pielke. The first graph in this article compares IPCC model outputs to the two main data sets of observed temps. Regardless of what your favorite think-tank claims, the observed warming trend is still 0.14degC/decade. The relatively cool bip of 2008 that the lobbyists claimed was the "end of global" warming was actually the 10th hottest on record.
"Please state which physical principle tells you that earth surface temperatures will rise as a result of increased incoming surface irradiation?"
Are you kidding me? You really don't know that atoms absorb photons of specific wavelengths and when they do so they move to a higher energy state and thus jiggle more vigourously? Surely you don't need to be told that temprature is simply a measure of how vigoursly atoms are jiggling, do you? Here is a simple experiment you can perform to convince yourself that the suns rays can warm the Earth's surface; walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky.
That last question is the kind of irrational nonsense that can only come from blind faith, and is th reason why I compared your anti-AGW beliefs to those of creationists. Both beliefs when taken to their logical conclusion fly in the face of large chunks of very basic science.
"I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?"
Rats, mice, goats, deer, pigs, hare, water buffalo, camels, horses, donkeys, cats, dogs, foxes, argentine ants, elm bettle, cane bettle (despite the toads that were introduced to eat them), fruit fly, European wasp, carp, trout, starlings, sparrows, Indian miners, blackbirds, song thrush, and a heap of plant species.
"After 350 ppm, it does not rise anymore. Whoops. Why does this happen ? Surely this formula of yours predicts otherwise. That's because this formula is only to be applied to the sunlight that passes through the athmosphere, avoids co2 on it's way in, hits the ground, gets re-emitted and then hits co2 on it's way out."
You seem to be blissfully unaware that the infra-red radiation re-emmited from Earth is at a different wave length to the visable/ultra-violet radiation that it absorbed. Climatologists and the IPCC are well aware incoming infra-red is absorbed by GHG's, it's the reason why infra-red astronomy requires a space based telescope.
"And please don't start about fractals having large-scale shapes until you've at least READ about what chaos is."
Chaos theory and fractal dimentions were covered in my maths major, is that good enough for you?
"A chaotic system can be, at a specific point, a perfect triangle."
Again you seem to have failed to take your own advise, a triangle could be used as the stating point for creating a fractal but it is not in itself a fractal nor is there anything chaotic about a perfect triangle. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is in a state of dynamic equilibrium on human time scales, it only becomes chaotic when feedbacks occur due to a considerable forcing being applied. Geologic records indicate that when this occurs the climate system tends to amplify the direction of forcing. Super computers are used to explore the effects of feedbacks using FEA, as I have shown by quoting Fourier the effects of forcing via inreased CO2 can be worked out on a pocket calculator and has absolutely nothing to do with chaos theory.
As for water vapour, see my first post where it talks about knowing the difference between a forcing and a feedback.
"Of course this theory makes [IPCC] policies totally incomprehensible."
I think you mean UNFCCC. The IPCC do not formulate or offer any political policy.
"Heh, I seriously doubt you'd even be able to tell me the name of a single program capable of answering this question without googling"
Mathematica is the first to spring to mind, it can implement FEA simulations to abitrary resolutions.
BTW: I have been following climate science for three decades, which is well before Google or the IPCC came into existance, at first it was simply a natural extention to my interest in computer simulation via finite element analysis (in which I am degree qualified). I suspect you dislike my use of Google because the links it provides conflict with your bald asertions.
"You can use a quantum level theory to get useful results"
Therfore it's a "good" theory in the same way that if the hooker gets your rocks off then she is a "good" hooker. Just be carefull not to fall in love with your theories or hookers.
"not meant to be anti-agw, though obviously, until tried or proven from first principles, the jury is still out"
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2 concentration - Fourier's 1824 prediction of the GHG properties of CO2 derived from it's spectra. Faraday confirmed Fourier's predictions by experiment in the 1850's. A modern version of that experiment can be seen here.
"Anyone mentioning the subtle detail that climate is chaotic"
Usually doesn't know the difference between climate and weather, let alone the difference between forcings and feedbacks.
"The only systems we can predict are systems that are, thermodynamically speaking, in equilibrium."
Yeah right, the size of expansion joints in bridges and railway tracks are picked out of a hat.
"But if the AGW "debate" proves anything, it's that science is no longer allowed to tell people "we don't know"."
No, what it proves is that a measly few million bucks worth of anti-science propoganda can create a huge army of usefull idiots such as yourself to create the impression of a debate about a well understood climate forcing.
The rest of the "science" in your post is so wrong it makes creationist arguments look reasonable. The whole thing is an accurate demonstration of the GP's astute observation that "stupid and pissed off (at the IPCC) is the new cool".
Ironically, your post also contains the cure for your ignorance in your call to teach scientific philosophy, unfortunately you don't seem to have taken your own advise and uncritically repeat the misinformation and red-herrings fed to you by lobbyists.
"you're no less anonymous than any other coward on here."
Rubbish, just because your slashdot identity is not your real world identity does not make it the same as posting AC. People don't stalk AC for revenge modding, astroturfing purposes, etc, nor can they look up AC's comment history and use it against them, nor can they tag AC as friend/foe.
I personally recognise quite a few far-right nutters by their slashdot id, I don't mark them as foes but I also don't bother responding to their crap. There are others who I recognise as having well reasoned opinions, similar ideals, or a specific field of expertise.
In other words a slashdot user has a searchable track record, an observable personality, and in many cases a reputation, an AC has none of those things.
"We can't honestly think that there is no undetectable gravitational effects between us and every pulsar in the universe, do we?"
Gravitational effects should not vary the frequency of the pulses in a detectable manner (over human time scales). However I recently read that scientists are indeed looking for systematic variations since they believe they would be evidence of gravitational waves. The random variations we currently see are probably due to the poles of the magnetic field shifting around (as do the poles of Earth's magnetic field).
Then again, I'm also nowhere near being an astrophysicist.
I agree that statistics are pure speculation but the Earth does count because abiogenisis is a "law of nature". We don't fully understand abiogenisis but we can say life is a chemical reaction in dynamic equilibrium that takes a considerable amount of time to reach the multi-cellular diversity and interdependence found on Earth.
The universal speed limit of light may be such that interstellar travel is simply impractical for a technological species. One can speculate that this confines technological species to their own star system.
This leads to the speculation that there may be another law of nature that says technological life is like yeast in a sealed jar in that it destroys it's own environment in a very short time geologically speaking. Therefore even with a gazillion planets a brief flash of technology here and there would be extremely difficult to spot.
Slashdot Mirror
I may be biased but I think the proportional system and mandatory voting gives a more balanced representation of what people want (or at least what they think they want) and since full control of both houses is quite rare it certainly forces the majors to compromise with the minors. However as with the case of Mr 2% it can also amplify the occasional fringe dwelling extremist voice way out of proportion, that outcome is most likely when the majors use their preferences as weapons against a strong third party such as the greens.
The current labor government is a single party left wing government but the conservative governments we have had in the past were actually a coalition of two parties, the nationals and the liberals. In effect we have three parties acting as the two majors, a strong third party in the greens, and a few oddballs with one or two seats.
You're both right. The GP is using the terms "government" and "govern" as they are commonly understood in the westminster system.
The term "being in government" in the westminster systems means you have enough MP's on your side to "form government". The party or coalition that forms government gets to pick one of their MP's to be the prime minister who in turn gets to pick the cabinet ministers. Only the MP's who belong to the party or coalition of parties that formed government are said to "govern", all other MP's are said to be in opposition and are refered to simply as "the opposition" or sometimes the "government in waiting".
The opposition have a leader (obstensibly the alternative PM), and a "shadow cabinet" composed of "shadow ministers". However the structure of the opposition gets a little complicated when there are minor parties involved. For example a minor opposition party may be more closely aligned with the government than with the opposition even though they are said to be in opposition, ie: they have their own minor opposition leader, etc.
Having been brought up in the westminster system it took me a long time to understand how the US system works and what the hell americans were talking about. I now have a reasonable understanding of the republican form of government and although there are a lot of similarities there are also major differences both in form and terminology.
For example there is no such thing as a lame duck prime minister, a bi-election for a single seat could theoretically cause a similar situation in the westminster system but it would then be called a change of government and the opposition leader would become the PM. The analogy the GP drew with congress and the presidency also makes sense when looked at from a westminster POV.
Here in Oz the recent state election in Tasmania resulted in a hung parlimet neither major party can form a government alone, that has put the greens in a very powerfull position. They also frequently hold the balance of power in the federal senate even though they only have a few senators.
Not sure about the UK system but the Aussie system of proportinal voting means that even though a candidate may only get a few percent of the vote in an election they also get to direct those votes to their prefered competitor. This means an independent or a single issue party candidate can influence the policy of the the major parties even before the election is held by promising to direct thier preference to the opponent who comes closest to their own policy.
However such "preference deals" as they are called can end up having really wierd results. Senator Fielding (IMHO the real villan behind the Aussie censorship trails) actually only got 2% of the primary vote for his seat (thus his nickname of Mr 2%) However due to the way the major parties cut their prefernce deals (attempted to prevent each other and the greens from winning) Fielding won the seat on preferences.
Under some circumstances Fielding can hold the balance of power in the senate. The infamous Conroy bought Fielding's senate vote on other more important legislation by setting up the censorship trials. Fielding recently worked out he had been screwed when his own anti-abortion sponsors turned up on the proposed blacklist. Conroy is now just going through the motions and the bill will die a natural death before the next election when Fielding will be looking for another job.
This is the way Aussie politicians from the two major parties deal with nutter's. The opposition who are promising to vote down the censorship bill in the senate are the same people who were promoting a similar bill for similar reason when they were in gonvernment. Conversly the same people who are in government now and promoting the bill voted down the previous bill when in opposition.
I'm not trying to defend Conroy personally (I believe the "other side" did the same thing) but as far as the filter goes I belive his intention from the start was to get Fielding's (and Xenophon's) vote in the senate and then kill the filter by being fully in favour of it.
Of course my theory about the internet filter is just informed speculation but being in government is not the same as being "the boss", politics is above all else the art of compromise and the application of influence. By forming a single issue political party the pirates at least have a voice even if they never get a representative into parliment.
"Well, I hope that this centrally-dictated economic activity works better than the 20th century ones did."
If you had read more than the word "soviet" you would have noticed it is actually five centrally-located scientific activities.
"The story only works under the assumption that there is zero liquid cash in town"
I think that's the moral of the story, as hasdikarlsam points out below the available currency must expand to meet the growth of the economy.
Yeah, but try telling Ron Paul fans that all currency is based on trust.
Not picking on you personally but will you people stop calling them "pipes", anyone with half a clue about the interwebs knows they are called "tubes".
"This starts to look like a circular dependency. We might as well not charge anybody and thereby save money on accounting."
Remminds me of the story about the rich man and the poor village....A rich man walks into a hotel in a poor village where all the bussinesses are in debt. He gives the hotelier $100 for a room on the condition that if he doesn't like it he will take the money back and leave. The hotelier gives him the keys, confident the rich man will like the room he takes the $100 and pays the grocer for the food he bought on credit. The grocer takes the $100 and pays back the farmer the money he owes him, the farmer uses it to pay back the blacksmith who then goes to the hotel to pay off his debt to the hooker who in turn gives it to the hotelier for past rent. The rich man comes back dissatisfied with the room, takes the $100 and leaves the village. Nothing has changed but the village is now debt free.
they could have "roo on the barbie"
How to piss off an Aussie
"I mean sure, they COULD just send their snipers off big game hunting, but that might not play so well."
They have been doing that since WW1. The recent shooting of 6000 terrorist camels hardly raised an eyebrow over here.
"the great population boogeyman of neo-Malthusians"
Ahhh, now I see. You have accepted the Catholic churches character assination of someone who dared to draw a comparison between human and animal populations. Someone who had the audacity to think humans are limited not by god's will but by available resources. No wonder you have no problems with humans wiping out the food chain, god will lift you up to heaven before the shit hits the fan, right?
Why do you think it's a binary choice between the sixth great extinction and "freezing the biosphere"? If you can't see the wisdom in avoiding actions that increase that rate of extinction to a point where your own species is in imminent danger of extinction then you are no more intelligent than a batch of fermenting yeast in a sealed container.
Why do think that is at all relevant to the problem of over fishing? How do past extinction events justify the gross stupidity of destroying the food chain on which we all depend? Following your rationale to it's logical conclusion would imply you have no problems if someone tasered you to death becuase plenty of people have been killed by lightning in the past.
I lived in Oz for half a century, modern Australian society is more open and transparent than it has ever been. The "kooky stories about oppressive laws, internet filtering, censorship, etc", are mostly industrial strength bullshit surrounding a half truth. The only reason many of these stories exist is because Murdoch does not approve of our current government.
"I think you mean Indian mynahs"
;)
Yes, I did.
"My uncle is an Indian miner out in WA"
Has he dug up any Indians lately?
"Why were the IPCC's predictions for 2000-2010 so very far off ? (actual temperatures close to 3 standard deviations from predicted values, meaning the chances of those predictions being correct are less than one in a million). Of course no doubt the rest of their prediction, which hasn't changed in response to this embarassing fuckup, are much better, right ?And why don't you answer the question why this embarassing total failure of prediction has not resulted in a reversal of policy ?"
What's embarrasing is your uncited use of the cherry picked drivel put out by Roger Pielke. The first graph in this article compares IPCC model outputs to the two main data sets of observed temps. Regardless of what your favorite think-tank claims, the observed warming trend is still 0.14degC/decade. The relatively cool bip of 2008 that the lobbyists claimed was the "end of global" warming was actually the 10th hottest on record.
"Please state which physical principle tells you that earth surface temperatures will rise as a result of increased incoming surface irradiation?"
Are you kidding me? You really don't know that atoms absorb photons of specific wavelengths and when they do so they move to a higher energy state and thus jiggle more vigourously? Surely you don't need to be told that temprature is simply a measure of how vigoursly atoms are jiggling, do you? Here is a simple experiment you can perform to convince yourself that the suns rays can warm the Earth's surface; walk outside on a clear summers day and feel the radiant heat coming from the direction of that large glowing object in the sky.
That last question is the kind of irrational nonsense that can only come from blind faith, and is th reason why I compared your anti-AGW beliefs to those of creationists. Both beliefs when taken to their logical conclusion fly in the face of large chunks of very basic science.
Exactly, I never click on ads so if someone looks hard enough at my cookies they should be able to work out it's not worth seving ads up to me.
"I think it should be about ways to get rid of invasive species. Any Aussies here? You've got what: rabbits, poisonous toads, some kind of insect, and.... what else?"
Rats, mice, goats, deer, pigs, hare, water buffalo, camels, horses, donkeys, cats, dogs, foxes, argentine ants, elm bettle, cane bettle (despite the toads that were introduced to eat them), fruit fly, European wasp, carp, trout, starlings, sparrows, Indian miners, blackbirds, song thrush, and a heap of plant species.
"After 350 ppm, it does not rise anymore. Whoops. Why does this happen ? Surely this formula of yours predicts otherwise. That's because this formula is only to be applied to the sunlight that passes through the athmosphere, avoids co2 on it's way in, hits the ground, gets re-emitted and then hits co2 on it's way out."
You seem to be blissfully unaware that the infra-red radiation re-emmited from Earth is at a different wave length to the visable/ultra-violet radiation that it absorbed. Climatologists and the IPCC are well aware incoming infra-red is absorbed by GHG's, it's the reason why infra-red astronomy requires a space based telescope.
"And please don't start about fractals having large-scale shapes until you've at least READ about what chaos is."
Chaos theory and fractal dimentions were covered in my maths major, is that good enough for you?
"A chaotic system can be, at a specific point, a perfect triangle."
Again you seem to have failed to take your own advise, a triangle could be used as the stating point for creating a fractal but it is not in itself a fractal nor is there anything chaotic about a perfect triangle. Climate is the long term statistics of weather and is in a state of dynamic equilibrium on human time scales, it only becomes chaotic when feedbacks occur due to a considerable forcing being applied. Geologic records indicate that when this occurs the climate system tends to amplify the direction of forcing. Super computers are used to explore the effects of feedbacks using FEA, as I have shown by quoting Fourier the effects of forcing via inreased CO2 can be worked out on a pocket calculator and has absolutely nothing to do with chaos theory.
As for water vapour, see my first post where it talks about knowing the difference between a forcing and a feedback.
"Of course this theory makes [IPCC] policies totally incomprehensible."
I think you mean UNFCCC. The IPCC do not formulate or offer any political policy.
"Heh, I seriously doubt you'd even be able to tell me the name of a single program capable of answering this question without googling"
Mathematica is the first to spring to mind, it can implement FEA simulations to abitrary resolutions.
BTW: I have been following climate science for three decades, which is well before Google or the IPCC came into existance, at first it was simply a natural extention to my interest in computer simulation via finite element analysis (in which I am degree qualified). I suspect you dislike my use of Google because the links it provides conflict with your bald asertions.
"You can use a quantum level theory to get useful results"
Therfore it's a "good" theory in the same way that if the hooker gets your rocks off then she is a "good" hooker. Just be carefull not to fall in love with your theories or hookers.
"not meant to be anti-agw, though obviously, until tried or proven from first principles, the jury is still out"
RF = 5.35*ln(C2/C1) = 3.71 W/M^2 for a doubling of CO2 concentration - Fourier's 1824 prediction of the GHG properties of CO2 derived from it's spectra. Faraday confirmed Fourier's predictions by experiment in the 1850's. A modern version of that experiment can be seen here.
"Anyone mentioning the subtle detail that climate is chaotic"
Usually doesn't know the difference between climate and weather, let alone the difference between forcings and feedbacks.
"The only systems we can predict are systems that are, thermodynamically speaking, in equilibrium."
Yeah right, the size of expansion joints in bridges and railway tracks are picked out of a hat.
"But if the AGW "debate" proves anything, it's that science is no longer allowed to tell people "we don't know"."
No, what it proves is that a measly few million bucks worth of anti-science propoganda can create a huge army of usefull idiots such as yourself to create the impression of a debate about a well understood climate forcing.
The rest of the "science" in your post is so wrong it makes creationist arguments look reasonable. The whole thing is an accurate demonstration of the GP's astute observation that "stupid and pissed off (at the IPCC) is the new cool".
Ironically, your post also contains the cure for your ignorance in your call to teach scientific philosophy, unfortunately you don't seem to have taken your own advise and uncritically repeat the misinformation and red-herrings fed to you by lobbyists.
Thanks for demonstrating the point of my post, wanker.
"you're no less anonymous than any other coward on here."
Rubbish, just because your slashdot identity is not your real world identity does not make it the same as posting AC. People don't stalk AC for revenge modding, astroturfing purposes, etc, nor can they look up AC's comment history and use it against them, nor can they tag AC as friend/foe.
I personally recognise quite a few far-right nutters by their slashdot id, I don't mark them as foes but I also don't bother responding to their crap. There are others who I recognise as having well reasoned opinions, similar ideals, or a specific field of expertise.
In other words a slashdot user has a searchable track record, an observable personality, and in many cases a reputation, an AC has none of those things.
"We can't honestly think that there is no undetectable gravitational effects between us and every pulsar in the universe, do we?"
Gravitational effects should not vary the frequency of the pulses in a detectable manner (over human time scales). However I recently read that scientists are indeed looking for systematic variations since they believe they would be evidence of gravitational waves. The random variations we currently see are probably due to the poles of the magnetic field shifting around (as do the poles of Earth's magnetic field). Then again, I'm also nowhere near being an astrophysicist.
"Earth does not count - observer bias."
I agree that statistics are pure speculation but the Earth does count because abiogenisis is a "law of nature". We don't fully understand abiogenisis but we can say life is a chemical reaction in dynamic equilibrium that takes a considerable amount of time to reach the multi-cellular diversity and interdependence found on Earth.
The universal speed limit of light may be such that interstellar travel is simply impractical for a technological species. One can speculate that this confines technological species to their own star system.
This leads to the speculation that there may be another law of nature that says technological life is like yeast in a sealed jar in that it destroys it's own environment in a very short time geologically speaking. Therefore even with a gazillion planets a brief flash of technology here and there would be extremely difficult to spot.