"This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember."
We have had a few Antartic blasts, I had my first "white christmas" because there was an inch or so of hail on the ground early in the morning and the ski resorts had a layer of snow. Australia as a whole has had fairly average rainfall throught the drought becase the north has been much wetter than normal, our weather pattern is continuing to shift in the direction predicted by the CSIRO but anecdotally the whole thing seems to have sped up a notch or two over the last couple of years.
I don't for a second doubt what you say about Qld, the sea surface temprature (SST) on the east coast of Qld is 2-4C below the west coast SST. But for hard facts and stats I highly recommend exploring our own weather service. The service has archives going back to 2000 easily accessible via the web, the oldest entry in each archive sumarises the trends of the pre-2000 archives. For tempratue and rainfall maps look here you can also navigate to archived predictions (outlooks) and climate statements via the menu directly above the table. There is literally tons of this kind of thing availble on the site.
As an example, thesemaps show neither of us is "bullshiting". What they say is that NE & SE coast has seen colder than average minimum tempratures but only the tropics and the east coast have seen cooler maximums, other than those cold spots the rest of the country has been warmer at both ends. This is closely following the trend that the CSIRO has predicted, but observations support the notion that the prdictions are in fact somewhat conservative. On a brighter note the next three months have a 60-65% chance of being wet ones in the SE due to the building El Nino.
Incedently the current El Nino event is predicted to make 2007 the warmest year on record yet again, it is also said to be largely responsible for the "missing" US hurricanes. If the last two US hurricane seasons is not a demonstration of "extremes", I am not sure what is?
Disclaimer: I'm 47 and have closely followed the weather and the climate debate since I was a deck hand in Bass straight in the early 80's. If you have been in Bass straight in a 20m fishing trawler on a "choppy" day you will understand why I became interested in weather and climate prediction. Many people would label me with the currently trendy "alarmist" slur, as if somehow the prospect of rapidly changing weather patterns effecting our food & water supply is not "alarming".
I belive in the monkeysphere theory of human behaviour, and it definitely backs up what you are saying. Only the other day I was arguing the very same point aginst someone who thought that control over resources, territory and labour were not the root cause of war.
"Until there is some kind of one world order (God forbid), this will be the way of things."
The more we understand our own failings, the better equiped we are to survive. I think the major GHG emmitters are quite capable of solving the problem without resorting to a 1984 senario, after all smaller versions of the same idea have worked for other pollutants such as lead and CFC's. I also belive human population has peaked, the window of opportunity to avoid an armagedon style "population correction" due to GW, peak oil and "the sixth great extinction" arriving mid to late 21st century is getting shorter one day at a time.
The IRA are the simply the last PITA remnants in the battle for control of territories on the British Isles that predates the Norman invasion. The ideological propoganda used to drive a wedge into the happless population was "Orange" vs "Green".
By "city sized" I meant every three weeks China adds enough capacity to it's grid to power a city comprable to this particular city, it's quite likely we are both saying the same thing in different ways.
"The Southern Hemisphere, in particular, does not seem to be warming noticeably."
I am sitting naked in my spare room in Melbourne Australia, it is about 2:30AM and simply too hot and muggy too sleep, there is the smell of smoke from extreme bushfires that started two months early this year. Tasmania has had to import electricity from the mainland due to a lack of water in their hydro scheme, 62% of our grain harvest (~17,000,000 tons) has been lost,....oh fuck it, it's too hot to argue with an AC ludite.
"While I will agree with nearly all of it, the one point that MAY be wrong is that this is man-made."
It is not a binary situation as some would have you belive but man is causing the majority of the accelerated warming observed since the 50's, the question most people now want answered ishow much CO2 is too much?".
The link contains detailed attributions for the multitude of forcings and feedbacks involved in the observed warming. Suffice to say that without man's input the planet would have cooled very slightly over the last century as opposed to what we are experiencing now, ie: looking back millions of years to find other examples of similar (yet slower) rates of warming on a global scale.
I'm not from the US but I think you are being a tad harsh with the "all" qualifier, 50% of all climate research has been funded by the US, much of it well spent on collecting and interpreting raw data via sattelites. OTOH: The current US Administration and the current government of my country (Australia) are both guilty of deliberate obstructionisim, willfull ignorance, and have actively engaged in anti-science propoganda to garner serious financial benifits for a select few at the expense of everyone else. Here in Australia our weather has been so bizzare this year even the prime minister has started back peddling as fast as he can, alas the US Administration still seems to be "caught in the headlights".
IMHO all countries should operate under the same rules for carbon emmissions and the vast majority of corporations are looking to government to set up "the rules" so that they can invest in 30yr energy projects with some degree certainty about their future ROI. Developed countries alone are responsible for what is occuring now and what will occur over next 50yrs or so due to the time lag in the climates reation. It is not only our moral responsibility but it is also in our long term self intrests to compensate nations such as China and India with the technology and resources required for them to "leap frog" fossil fuel technology and I applaud the publicly stated aims of the US/India/Australia deal to supply nuclear fuel to "leap frog" India's energy infrastructure into the 21st century.
China is said to be bringing one "city sized" coal fired plant online every three weeks, the sooner every nation in the global energy bussiness sits down at the table in good faith and agrees on a scientifically based plan of action the better. To do otherwise will just continue the exponetial growth in what is otherwise known as "the tradgedy of the commons".
"And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement."
You see to think that because I belive ExonnMobil has engaged in a concerted propoganda effort using similar strategies as Phillip Morris in it's anti-science campaign that I also belive all corprate sponsered reseach is tarred with the same brush. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Aside from that, I don't wish to maintain two threads with the same person on the same subject.
That phrase is a play on words involving a science fiction book called "State of fear", the authour of the novel was disingenously invited to give "evidence" to a US senate commitee and introduced as a "climate expert". Look up the plot, it's nowhere near as good as the junk science in his best seller, "Jurrasic Park".:)
"I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong..."
I'm saying "the consenus" == "established theory" using the exact same process used to establish the theory of evolution, GR, atoms, germs, ect, (ie: the scientific method). I also claim that "established theory" is not static but is constantly being tested and refined, money spent testing and refining is well spent iff the question is considered "important" by enough people. Do politicians in a corpratised government try to "rig the answers", you bet! The fact that science has come up with the opposite to what they wanted, is in my mind enough justification to state the politicians have indeed got a scientific answer and wished they hadn't (no politicians wants to be the bearer of bad news).
"...,just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle.
You hint of solar observations, yet you still haven't specified what "angle" has not been "attacked"? I agree there are plenty of things that are unknown and uncertain, but when I was a kid black holes were still a "theory", when I was a teenager I actually remember reading about the "coming ice age" in National Geographic (I was looking for breasts, I swear).
"Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding?"
I respect GR for exactly the same reasons I respect "the global warming consensus" and have observed both being tested and refined for decades, what is your reason? It is interesting that you picked gravity, there is no known analytical solution to the "three body problem", yet we are able to build iterative computer models capable of shooting a space ship through the gaps in the rings of Saturn, twice! Climate models use the laws of physics to approximate reality in exactly the same manner.
Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
As I said "the consenus" is "established theory", you don't have to accept it and (as ExonnMobile, Phillip Morris and others have discovered), it definitely will not accept you unless you play by the "method". Science is indeed a "best guess", it does not, and will not, ever offer a "correct" answer, but can you think of anything that comes even remotely close to it's predictive power?
PS: I belive you are genuine in what you say and can hold your own in an intelligent "dinner conversation". Another climate change story has popped up on the front page so I suspect you will drop off the bottom of my recent comments page. I would be happy to continue the conversation via email if you wish, my email is alan_mortimer59@hotmail.com. In the meantime, Michael Mann is one of the top climatoloigsts in the world, he also set up RealClimate and often answers posts on the comments page personally. And just to be fair, here is a reasonably comprehesive list of scientists who disagree with the consensus, all have attracted plenty of funding over the last decade or so, RealClimate will point you at rebuttals for their scientific arguments.
I realise GR states that "the universal now" does not exist, so I included the caveat: "ignoring gravitational bodies and the relative motion between observer and event".
The point I was trying to make is that the GP was (IMHO) being a tad pedantic about the use of the word "already" since it was fairly obvious what the OP meant.
Now you come along, add a third observer and start talking about the effects of relativity as things are "wizzing past" each other, why?
It has already happened from the pillars perspective but cannot be observed from Earth and thus from Earth's perspective appears that it has not already happened. A light cone is simply a sub-section of the expanding spherical boundry of an observable event starting from time T (ignoring gravitational bodies and the relative motion between observer and event).
In other words, I think we all understand the cat is dead even though we haven't opened the box to prove it.
If you look at the three branches in the top RHS of the tree in figure 1, you will see three brances labeled, "plants", "animals" and "fungi". I and many others were taught in an early 70's high school that all life could be classified as belonging to one of those three branches, bacteria were explained as single celled members of one of the 3 branches, one example we were given was an ameboa [sic?] was like an animal because "it hunts other single cell critters and eats them" and they had a B&W movie to demonstrate it. I don't claim that it was correct but it's what I was taught at the time.
I first realised the tree was bigger in the early 90's, a documentry explained the lifecycle of slime mold complete with timelapse sequences showing off it's plant, animal and fungal features, but still, that was only four branches in my layman's version of the tree. A few years later I read a book about how "Alvin" the submersible had expanded the tree with the weird and wonderfull critters that live around deep sea vents and gave a picture similar to figure 1. I've also heard of other branches that extract energy from uranium 2km below ground and still others that live on the cooling rods of nuclear reactors.
Maybe none of this is news to you, but it was to me when I heard it so I thought I would pass it on. Speaking of passing things on, here is an animation you might enjoy. It's from a group of Havard microboligists showing the workings of a single cell, the animation is set to music so it's up to you if you want to reasearch what is happening. I thought I knew a little bit about cells assembling protiens and such until I saw that video on the news and was awe struck by the sheer complexity of natures nano-machines that have somehow got together and decided to build a pile of temporarily cooperative atoms capable of contemplating it's own navel, (ie: "me").
Now that you mention it, we did have to replace those drives when the image became too large but I have no recolection of how we explained it, all this happened circa 1997 so please forgive any inconsistencies.
I agree and was attempting to show stupid decisions often have have sound logic behind them that has nothing to do with engineering (except maybe in a social sense). In the situation I describe, a kinder way of looking at the PHB would be to say he found himself "out of his depth" and thus spent alot of time treading water.
BTW: $80M dollars for a 90's era, bleeding edge, work dispatch system also seems a tad extravagant until you realise it enabled the customer to sell $600M worth of prime real-estate thus boosting their share price (and bonuses) considerably.
I know that some, but certainly not all, "hidden" hardware/software is the result of a PHB "work-around", I submit the following anecdote about illogical engineering vs optimal solutions....
Many moons ago I worked on a large project where we supplied a logistics application along with 8000 laptops that we were also expected to maintain. The spec's for the laptop's were written into the $80M/5yr contract, in particular the contract specified "special" (ie: manafactured by our sister company) laptops with a 120M HDD. A thousand or so laptops were delivered immediately, I suspect this was mainly to garner a large initial payment, 800 were then stored in a warehouse by the customer for 2yrs while we wrote the software and ran a pilot with the other 200.
When it came time to ramp up to full production we found we could no longer get 120M HDD's but could get 250M for the same price (the HDD's were third party PCMCIA cards that were supposed to be "pre-imaged" by the hardware guys). The Dilbert moment happened when a PHB with way too much time on his hands had to sign the purchase order and demanded 120M HDD's because "that's what's it says in the contract". The solution was illogical but effective, we quietly arranged for our hardware friends to format the 250M physical drive into a 120M logical drive and ignore the remaning space (and told them why). A few PHB readable edits to the PO and hey presto a warehouse full of laptops with our software pre-installed on 120M drives and an extra PHB-invisible partion.
Now throwing away half the drive is clearlly illogical but in my mind it was the "optimal" solution, with the possible exception of a time consuming appendectomy that would gum up the workflow for weeks/months and could possibly result in a devil we didn't know taking over. I also say "optimal" because: The PHB belived he had asserted his authority over the project and a rival PHB in the sister company, all with just one demand. From what I recall he went off to pester someone else and gloat about it. Not only did it nueter the PHB but HR, the lawyers and the accountants were kept in their cages, the techies got a good laugh, and the customer remained oblivious to the whole fiasco.
Finally, a year or so into production when the image size started to bloat towards the 120M limit, the same PHB asked for a costing to retrofit bigger drives, like any good salesman we umm'ed and ahh'ed then went off to "see what we could do" before announcing we could remotely activate a new D: drive on a standard update cycle using some simple "magic" and a couple of mandays labour. The news delighted the PHB who promptly added a manday for his own "time". We didn't even hint that it was his previous demand had caused the current space squeeze, we simply saved our eveidence in case an appendectomy was required at some future random impasse. We also saved all the "can do" brownie points for the next time we had to convince the same PHB that his proposed solution to some imaginary problem really, truly, is a "can't do" situation, regardless of what PC week says.
We have found many new and oddball extremophiles over the last few decades living right here on Earth in places that were once considered impossibly "hostile to life". This has resulted in a tree of life with many more branches than the animal, plant and fungi ones I was taught at high school.
The three "essential ingredients" for life now seem to be carbon, water and energy but we haven't finished searching the planet yet, let alone our solar system and beyond.
To summerize: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it".
Close, dark matter is the "hack" we use to make our theories fit our obervations. If we had not observed "something" we would not need to invent the name "dark matter" to label it.
I fail to see how it is a "poor excuse" for anything, it's mearly a description of something we don't fully undersatnd but can indirectly observe and therfore label. Maybe our elegant theories will need to change to account for future observation but right now our notion of what we label as "dark matter" explains the observed anomolies better than any other concept, including the proposed modifications to gravitational theory.
For a historical perspective you just need to go back a hundered years to a time when scientists were having a similar debate about the existance and structure of atoms. Sure the model of atoms looking like "a pudding with razor blades stuck in it" fell by the wayside when it failed to explain all the observations. That is how science progresses, it's an evolution of ideas and analogies, not a static statement of "the truth".
"They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding."
Oh the irony, your "problem of funding" is an "insinuation of tainted motives" on a global scale. You offer anecdotes from "friends" who were "chased out of the field" and make sweeping assertions without anything to back it up, please link to one RC article where the authour engages in name-calling.
"We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like."
I couldn't agree more, I urge you and your friends to cease the slander on funding and concentrate on the science. After all that is why ExonnMobil's propoganda is now seen as irrelevant (if not treasonous). Not everyone in the oil bussiness thinks like ExonnMobil, you may like to look up the scientific credentials and opinions of one Lord Oxburgh who was chairman of the board at Shell from 2004-5, and has had considerable infuence in setting the 450ppm target that Tony Blair and others have adopted.
"If we could just find that guy and "cancel" him, the world would be a better place..."
Yes, and if I understand your theory correctly, two pyhco-girlfriend particles (PGP's) should anhilate each other when they come into contact, ergo it's a single particle. If we all moved to different states simultaneously, perhaps we could create a CRM information vacum large enough to trap the PGP.
Slashdot Mirror
"This is definitely the mildest summer I can remember."
/rant
We have had a few Antartic blasts, I had my first "white christmas" because there was an inch or so of hail on the ground early in the morning and the ski resorts had a layer of snow. Australia as a whole has had fairly average rainfall throught the drought becase the north has been much wetter than normal, our weather pattern is continuing to shift in the direction predicted by the CSIRO but anecdotally the whole thing seems to have sped up a notch or two over the last couple of years.
I don't for a second doubt what you say about Qld, the sea surface temprature (SST) on the east coast of Qld is 2-4C below the west coast SST. But for hard facts and stats I highly recommend exploring our own weather service. The service has archives going back to 2000 easily accessible via the web, the oldest entry in each archive sumarises the trends of the pre-2000 archives. For tempratue and rainfall maps look here you can also navigate to archived predictions (outlooks) and climate statements via the menu directly above the table. There is literally tons of this kind of thing availble on the site.
As an example, these maps show neither of us is "bullshiting". What they say is that NE & SE coast has seen colder than average minimum tempratures but only the tropics and the east coast have seen cooler maximums, other than those cold spots the rest of the country has been warmer at both ends. This is closely following the trend that the CSIRO has predicted, but observations support the notion that the prdictions are in fact somewhat conservative. On a brighter note the next three months have a 60-65% chance of being wet ones in the SE due to the building El Nino.
Incedently the current El Nino event is predicted to make 2007 the warmest year on record yet again, it is also said to be largely responsible for the "missing" US hurricanes. If the last two US hurricane seasons is not a demonstration of "extremes", I am not sure what is?
Disclaimer: I'm 47 and have closely followed the weather and the climate debate since I was a deck hand in Bass straight in the early 80's. If you have been in Bass straight in a 20m fishing trawler on a "choppy" day you will understand why I became interested in weather and climate prediction. Many people would label me with the currently trendy "alarmist" slur, as if somehow the prospect of rapidly changing weather patterns effecting our food & water supply is not "alarming".
Thank you for the Gordon Gecko "greed is good" speech. However you missed a bit, after "Greed is good, greed is right." comes...
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
No, and nor do I belive the tooth fairy will save us.
I belive in the monkeysphere theory of human behaviour, and it definitely backs up what you are saying. Only the other day I was arguing the very same point aginst someone who thought that control over resources, territory and labour were not the root cause of war.
"Until there is some kind of one world order (God forbid), this will be the way of things."
The more we understand our own failings, the better equiped we are to survive. I think the major GHG emmitters are quite capable of solving the problem without resorting to a 1984 senario, after all smaller versions of the same idea have worked for other pollutants such as lead and CFC's. I also belive human population has peaked, the window of opportunity to avoid an armagedon style "population correction" due to GW, peak oil and "the sixth great extinction" arriving mid to late 21st century is getting shorter one day at a time.
The IRA are the simply the last PITA remnants in the battle for control of territories on the British Isles that predates the Norman invasion. The ideological propoganda used to drive a wedge into the happless population was "Orange" vs "Green".
By "city sized" I meant every three weeks China adds enough capacity to it's grid to power a city comprable to this particular city, it's quite likely we are both saying the same thing in different ways.
"The Southern Hemisphere, in particular, does not seem to be warming noticeably."
I am sitting naked in my spare room in Melbourne Australia, it is about 2:30AM and simply too hot and muggy too sleep, there is the smell of smoke from extreme bushfires that started two months early this year. Tasmania has had to import electricity from the mainland due to a lack of water in their hydro scheme, 62% of our grain harvest (~17,000,000 tons) has been lost,....oh fuck it, it's too hot to argue with an AC ludite.
"While I will agree with nearly all of it, the one point that MAY be wrong is that this is man-made."
It is not a binary situation as some would have you belive but man is causing the majority of the accelerated warming observed since the 50's, the question most people now want answered ishow much CO2 is too much?".
The link contains detailed attributions for the multitude of forcings and feedbacks involved in the observed warming. Suffice to say that without man's input the planet would have cooled very slightly over the last century as opposed to what we are experiencing now, ie: looking back millions of years to find other examples of similar (yet slower) rates of warming on a global scale.
I'm not from the US but I think you are being a tad harsh with the "all" qualifier, 50% of all climate research has been funded by the US, much of it well spent on collecting and interpreting raw data via sattelites. OTOH: The current US Administration and the current government of my country (Australia) are both guilty of deliberate obstructionisim, willfull ignorance, and have actively engaged in anti-science propoganda to garner serious financial benifits for a select few at the expense of everyone else. Here in Australia our weather has been so bizzare this year even the prime minister has started back peddling as fast as he can, alas the US Administration still seems to be "caught in the headlights".
IMHO all countries should operate under the same rules for carbon emmissions and the vast majority of corporations are looking to government to set up "the rules" so that they can invest in 30yr energy projects with some degree certainty about their future ROI. Developed countries alone are responsible for what is occuring now and what will occur over next 50yrs or so due to the time lag in the climates reation. It is not only our moral responsibility but it is also in our long term self intrests to compensate nations such as China and India with the technology and resources required for them to "leap frog" fossil fuel technology and I applaud the publicly stated aims of the US/India/Australia deal to supply nuclear fuel to "leap frog" India's energy infrastructure into the 21st century.
China is said to be bringing one "city sized" coal fired plant online every three weeks, the sooner every nation in the global energy bussiness sits down at the table in good faith and agrees on a scientifically based plan of action the better. To do otherwise will just continue the exponetial growth in what is otherwise known as "the tradgedy of the commons".
"And there it is... we need go no further to see the gross abuses to which the scientific method is subjected than to read that statement."
You see to think that because I belive ExonnMobil has engaged in a concerted propoganda effort using similar strategies as Phillip Morris in it's anti-science campaign that I also belive all corprate sponsered reseach is tarred with the same brush. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Aside from that, I don't wish to maintain two threads with the same person on the same subject.
"as one person calls it, a "climate of fear""
:)
That phrase is a play on words involving a science fiction book called "State of fear", the authour of the novel was disingenously invited to give "evidence" to a US senate commitee and introduced as a "climate expert". Look up the plot, it's nowhere near as good as the junk science in his best seller, "Jurrasic Park".
"I'm not even saying that the consensus is right or wrong..."
I'm saying "the consenus" == "established theory" using the exact same process used to establish the theory of evolution, GR, atoms, germs, ect, (ie: the scientific method). I also claim that "established theory" is not static but is constantly being tested and refined, money spent testing and refining is well spent iff the question is considered "important" by enough people. Do politicians in a corpratised government try to "rig the answers", you bet! The fact that science has come up with the opposite to what they wanted, is in my mind enough justification to state the politicians have indeed got a scientific answer and wished they hadn't (no politicians wants to be the bearer of bad news).
"...,just that there's no way to call it science when it's not attacked from every angle.
You hint of solar observations, yet you still haven't specified what "angle" has not been "attacked"? I agree there are plenty of things that are unknown and uncertain, but when I was a kid black holes were still a "theory", when I was a teenager I actually remember reading about the "coming ice age" in National Geographic (I was looking for breasts, I swear).
"Can you imagine how little respect we'd have for general relativity if it remained unassailed for fear of losing funding?"
I respect GR for exactly the same reasons I respect "the global warming consensus" and have observed both being tested and refined for decades, what is your reason? It is interesting that you picked gravity, there is no known analytical solution to the "three body problem", yet we are able to build iterative computer models capable of shooting a space ship through the gaps in the rings of Saturn, twice! Climate models use the laws of physics to approximate reality in exactly the same manner.
Could we possibly accept it as "consensus," or would we just think of it as a "best guess?"
As I said "the consenus" is "established theory", you don't have to accept it and (as ExonnMobile, Phillip Morris and others have discovered), it definitely will not accept you unless you play by the "method". Science is indeed a "best guess", it does not, and will not, ever offer a "correct" answer, but can you think of anything that comes even remotely close to it's predictive power?
PS: I belive you are genuine in what you say and can hold your own in an intelligent "dinner conversation". Another climate change story has popped up on the front page so I suspect you will drop off the bottom of my recent comments page. I would be happy to continue the conversation via email if you wish, my email is alan_mortimer59@hotmail.com. In the meantime, Michael Mann is one of the top climatoloigsts in the world, he also set up RealClimate and often answers posts on the comments page personally. And just to be fair, here is a reasonably comprehesive list of scientists who disagree with the consensus, all have attracted plenty of funding over the last decade or so, RealClimate will point you at rebuttals for their scientific arguments.
When? -> "the universal now".
I realise GR states that "the universal now" does not exist, so I included the caveat: "ignoring gravitational bodies and the relative motion between observer and event".
The point I was trying to make is that the GP was (IMHO) being a tad pedantic about the use of the word "already" since it was fairly obvious what the OP meant.
Now you come along, add a third observer and start talking about the effects of relativity as things are "wizzing past" each other, why?
It has already happened from the pillars perspective but cannot be observed from Earth and thus from Earth's perspective appears that it has not already happened. A light cone is simply a sub-section of the expanding spherical boundry of an observable event starting from time T (ignoring gravitational bodies and the relative motion between observer and event).
In other words, I think we all understand the cat is dead even though we haven't opened the box to prove it.
"Funny how the most important things can't be proven or disproved isn't it."
Funny how that statement proves you are an AC wanker, but I suppose that's not important.
Yes, yes, I said "microboligists" and I meant it. :)
If you look at the three branches in the top RHS of the tree in figure 1, you will see three brances labeled, "plants", "animals" and "fungi". I and many others were taught in an early 70's high school that all life could be classified as belonging to one of those three branches, bacteria were explained as single celled members of one of the 3 branches, one example we were given was an ameboa [sic?] was like an animal because "it hunts other single cell critters and eats them" and they had a B&W movie to demonstrate it. I don't claim that it was correct but it's what I was taught at the time.
I first realised the tree was bigger in the early 90's, a documentry explained the lifecycle of slime mold complete with timelapse sequences showing off it's plant, animal and fungal features, but still, that was only four branches in my layman's version of the tree. A few years later I read a book about how "Alvin" the submersible had expanded the tree with the weird and wonderfull critters that live around deep sea vents and gave a picture similar to figure 1. I've also heard of other branches that extract energy from uranium 2km below ground and still others that live on the cooling rods of nuclear reactors.
Maybe none of this is news to you, but it was to me when I heard it so I thought I would pass it on. Speaking of passing things on, here is an animation you might enjoy. It's from a group of Havard microboligists showing the workings of a single cell, the animation is set to music so it's up to you if you want to reasearch what is happening. I thought I knew a little bit about cells assembling protiens and such until I saw that video on the news and was awe struck by the sheer complexity of natures nano-machines that have somehow got together and decided to build a pile of temporarily cooperative atoms capable of contemplating it's own navel, (ie: "me").
Now that you mention it, we did have to replace those drives when the image became too large but I have no recolection of how we explained it, all this happened circa 1997 so please forgive any inconsistencies.
I agree and was attempting to show stupid decisions often have have sound logic behind them that has nothing to do with engineering (except maybe in a social sense). In the situation I describe, a kinder way of looking at the PHB would be to say he found himself "out of his depth" and thus spent alot of time treading water.
BTW: $80M dollars for a 90's era, bleeding edge, work dispatch system also seems a tad extravagant until you realise it enabled the customer to sell $600M worth of prime real-estate thus boosting their share price (and bonuses) considerably.
"Code writting is not pizza baking."
Reminds me of the time when "someone" hacked our new fangled photocopier to complain it was "out of pizza" rather than paper.
I know that some, but certainly not all, "hidden" hardware/software is the result of a PHB "work-around", I submit the following anecdote about illogical engineering vs optimal solutions....
Many moons ago I worked on a large project where we supplied a logistics application along with 8000 laptops that we were also expected to maintain. The spec's for the laptop's were written into the $80M/5yr contract, in particular the contract specified "special" (ie: manafactured by our sister company) laptops with a 120M HDD. A thousand or so laptops were delivered immediately, I suspect this was mainly to garner a large initial payment, 800 were then stored in a warehouse by the customer for 2yrs while we wrote the software and ran a pilot with the other 200.
When it came time to ramp up to full production we found we could no longer get 120M HDD's but could get 250M for the same price (the HDD's were third party PCMCIA cards that were supposed to be "pre-imaged" by the hardware guys). The Dilbert moment happened when a PHB with way too much time on his hands had to sign the purchase order and demanded 120M HDD's because "that's what's it says in the contract". The solution was illogical but effective, we quietly arranged for our hardware friends to format the 250M physical drive into a 120M logical drive and ignore the remaning space (and told them why). A few PHB readable edits to the PO and hey presto a warehouse full of laptops with our software pre-installed on 120M drives and an extra PHB-invisible partion.
Now throwing away half the drive is clearlly illogical but in my mind it was the "optimal" solution, with the possible exception of a time consuming appendectomy that would gum up the workflow for weeks/months and could possibly result in a devil we didn't know taking over. I also say "optimal" because: The PHB belived he had asserted his authority over the project and a rival PHB in the sister company, all with just one demand. From what I recall he went off to pester someone else and gloat about it. Not only did it nueter the PHB but HR, the lawyers and the accountants were kept in their cages, the techies got a good laugh, and the customer remained oblivious to the whole fiasco.
Finally, a year or so into production when the image size started to bloat towards the 120M limit, the same PHB asked for a costing to retrofit bigger drives, like any good salesman we umm'ed and ahh'ed then went off to "see what we could do" before announcing we could remotely activate a new D: drive on a standard update cycle using some simple "magic" and a couple of mandays labour. The news delighted the PHB who promptly added a manday for his own "time". We didn't even hint that it was his previous demand had caused the current space squeeze, we simply saved our eveidence in case an appendectomy was required at some future random impasse. We also saved all the "can do" brownie points for the next time we had to convince the same PHB that his proposed solution to some imaginary problem really, truly, is a "can't do" situation, regardless of what PC week says.
Someone please mod this agressive idiot to hell....please.
We have found many new and oddball extremophiles over the last few decades living right here on Earth in places that were once considered impossibly "hostile to life". This has resulted in a tree of life with many more branches than the animal, plant and fungi ones I was taught at high school.
The three "essential ingredients" for life now seem to be carbon, water and energy but we haven't finished searching the planet yet, let alone our solar system and beyond.
To summerize: "It's life Jim, but not as we know it".
Close, dark matter is the "hack" we use to make our theories fit our obervations. If we had not observed "something" we would not need to invent the name "dark matter" to label it.
I fail to see how it is a "poor excuse" for anything, it's mearly a description of something we don't fully undersatnd but can indirectly observe and therfore label. Maybe our elegant theories will need to change to account for future observation but right now our notion of what we label as "dark matter" explains the observed anomolies better than any other concept, including the proposed modifications to gravitational theory.
For a historical perspective you just need to go back a hundered years to a time when scientists were having a similar debate about the existance and structure of atoms. Sure the model of atoms looking like "a pudding with razor blades stuck in it" fell by the wayside when it failed to explain all the observations. That is how science progresses, it's an evolution of ideas and analogies, not a static statement of "the truth".
"They usually resort to name-calling, insinuations of tainted motivations, etc. without actually responding to the points being made, epsecially with respect to the problem of funding."
Oh the irony, your "problem of funding" is an "insinuation of tainted motives" on a global scale. You offer anecdotes from "friends" who were "chased out of the field" and make sweeping assertions without anything to back it up, please link to one RC article where the authour engages in name-calling.
"We need to support scientists who have valid work to do, even if they're coming up with hypotheses and data that we don't like."
I couldn't agree more, I urge you and your friends to cease the slander on funding and concentrate on the science. After all that is why ExonnMobil's propoganda is now seen as irrelevant (if not treasonous). Not everyone in the oil bussiness thinks like ExonnMobil, you may like to look up the scientific credentials and opinions of one Lord Oxburgh who was chairman of the board at Shell from 2004-5, and has had considerable infuence in setting the 450ppm target that Tony Blair and others have adopted.
"If we could just find that guy and "cancel" him, the world would be a better place..."
Yes, and if I understand your theory correctly, two pyhco-girlfriend particles (PGP's) should anhilate each other when they come into contact, ergo it's a single particle. If we all moved to different states simultaneously, perhaps we could create a CRM information vacum large enough to trap the PGP.