Yep, it's not an "either/or" situation, there is fault on both sides. I am 47 and was belted with straps, canes and backboard rulers. We still gave certain teachers hell and I remeber one kid hitting a teacher (the kid got a pummeling and was expeled), at the other extreme I saw the headmaster punch a kid in the nose for making fun of another teacher.
Some teachers could control a class without lifting a finger or shouting. Unlike the GP these rare teachers knew that "showing kids respect" and "controling kids behaviour" are two different things that work best hand in hand.
It's not like it's a secret or anything, simply stated: Those who can't control themselves have no hope of controling others.
"The climate models have such wide ranges that they predict everything"
Nothing can predict the mind numbing ingnorance of an AC who would give the Pastafarian paradoy the same weight as a physics text book when discussing science.
*===Hey mom, I fed the troll, Jane has to do the dishes.
Damm it, what a screw-up! I already knew from reading Galileo's biography that basically he got in trouble with the pope because the pope interpreted his book as a personal insult, and yet I still managed to paraphrase the "religious dogma" story I was taught ~40yrs ago! Worst still I got the subject matter completely wrong. I also accept that only a fringe element of the church still doubt evolution.
In short, I stand corrected on both the pope and the evolution comment, and am willing to serve as an example of just how powerfull myths can be.
"We Canadians don't tend to get so worked up about individual freedoms when the common good is at stake."
We Aussies have a similar attitude, but I contend that the "common good" is served by a "free speech" as idealised in the US constitution and elwehere. I have no objections to blacklists for adults, provided the adult has a transparent choice. As for the wide availability of child porn and other "evils" on the net, if you find it report it to the cops (or your MP) as evidence of a possible crime.
I firmly belive (ie: I only have anecdotes), that the internet has done more to catch "rock spiders" than it has to encourage them (re: Denmark/Interpol/90's). The most horrifying example of "evil exposed by free speech" I have seen recently has nothing to do with the net or child porn, it was from Bob Geldof's "the four horsemen". ( Part of this fascinating BBC series ).
He warns the squimish and kids to leave the room then tells the story of an African "rebel leader" who steals pre-pubecent children and trains them as a personal child army. Every evening all the towns and villages around the "rebel leader's" mountain camp see an exodous of children. They are headed in all directions five or so miles into the desert where they can sleep on open ground in relative safety.
When the unlucky ones are first kiddnapped, escape routes are made obvious so their tormentors can catch the first few to swallow the bait and try to escape. Those that are caught are taken back to the hut they "escaped" from, the other "fresh recruits" in the hut are then forced to kill the escapee by biting them to death! Those that fail to have meat in their mouth after taking a bite are themselves bitten or killed by their captors, self preservation rapidly ensures the order is followed. Those that survive the "army trainning" are understandably loyal fanatics who perpetuate the "system".
Free speech brings the human coackroaches out in the open and allows us to collectively step on them. Geldof made a dircet plea on the show when he said "I would like someone to go into the mountains, find the warlord, and kill him". Some would say Geldof is guilty of hate speech, inciting violence or that he exploited the ( visibly anxious ) children he filmed and interviewed simply to make a cheap political point. I'm not one of them, I think it should be required viewing in high school media classes and UN meetings.
Yep, there are many people who were taught that "Columbus proved the Earth was round", however this guy worked out it's circumference about 2000yrs before Columbus was born. You'd think all the ancient art depicting the god Atlas carrying a globe would have given the Pope a fucking clue! Perhaps this means that by the year 3500 the church will have accepted evolution.
The "hockey stick" is revealed truth because "state of the art" computer models...
Two minor points here, first the "hockey stick" was published in the early eighties, observed tempratures have closely followed the predicted trend for over 25yrs now. The authority of the graph comes from it's emprically proven track record in predicting average global tempratures. The graph has also been independently reproduced many times using differnt data sets and different techniques, computer models are just one more technique used for confirmation of the original analysis.
The other point about the IPCC is that it most definitely is not based soley on "computer models", you need to do more than skim the executive summary if you want to make any genuine critisims. Oh, and "indisputable" in scientific terms means there are no scientific objections to the methods used, anyone can say "I object" but for scientists to take notice you need to back it up with more than mere assertions.
"Maybe you'd like to point out were in the various GCMs the solar output is predicted or used as an input to the models?"
Not sure what to say here, the sun is included as the main "forcing", it would be an extremly poor model if it wasn't since that is the only significant source of energy reaching our planet. The site I pointed to has plenty of information on solar flux and will point you to the data and methods used, naturally it is somewhat idealised since we are talking about a model.
"Maybe the models ought to be tested by predicting results that are already known? How well do those models do when predicting the observed weather in the 1950's? 60's? Any time period for which the information has already been collected? No? Maybe an inability to predict the past casts doubt on the validity of the model's ability to predict future? Waddya think?"
You seem like an intelligent sort, and the objections you state would be reasonable if your assumption were true. I encourage you to look carefully at the realclimate site and find out for yourself that the testing you suggest was (and still is) a large part of developing the models. If you have some heavy duty computing power (or a lot of time) you can watch hurricanes form in the same areas as they do in real life, nobody tells the computer to create hurricanes they simply form due to the physics of the model and the initial data.
Perhaps there are mechanisms which aren't well understood! Perhaps there are mechanisms which haven't been discovered?!
No "perhaps" about it, you are correct on both counts, anyone who claims to know everything is at best only fooling themselves. However, the imperfect models we are talking about are not based on any "climate religion", they represent the best "educated guess" humanity can muster, they have acurately predicted many events on a regional basis and are regularly used to predict the paths of cyclones. It is foolish in the extreme to base public policy on "climate religion" regardless of wich way the "religion" leans, unfortunately anti-AGW religion has been the political status-quo for the last two decades.
Do you realise that the computer chip you used to generate that bit of flamebait would not exist without computer models.
The whole endevour of scientific inquiry consists of applying models to data, just because a model is not perfect does not mean it is not usefull (eg: Newtonian mechanics).
For your edification: Here are some common myths about the hockey stick from the people who created the original (Mann, et al)
That's a nice theory but methane doesn't last very long in the atmosphere, the best scientists working in climatology are still scratching their heads on this one.
"If the Arctic shrinks and the Antarctic grows at a similar rate"
The point is that they don't, also the total volume of ice that matters a lot more than the area it covers. The volume of Antaric ice has changed very little if at all, the increased sea ice in the Antartic may be due to Antartic glaciers moving into the sea at a slightly faster rate, however increased snowfall more or less balances the loss (unlike greenland and the Antartic pennisula where increased snowfall can not keep up with the loss).
"Get your stories straight or don't post..misinformation doesn't benefit anyone"
Not sure what your point is here since the GP didn't mention Anatartica, Arctic ice comes from the Arctic (north), Antartic ice comes from Antartica (south). Since the mid 1950's the Arctic ice cap has lost ~60% of it's volume (although one "skeptic" belives the missing ice is hiding behind Canada somewhere).
There has been very little change in the volume of the Antartic ice cap, however both the Antartic penninsula and Greenland have experinced a +3C rise in average tempratures compared to the +1C global average (accurately predicted by climate models I might add).
"I'm sorry? Methane has a forcing potential of up to 24 times as much of CO2."
It's a moot point unless we are talking huge releases over a short time (eg: Hydrates from the ocean floor), compared to CO2, Methane degrades rapidly in the atmosphere.
It is true that a warmer atmosphere will hold slightly more water vapour. The reason why water vapour is "ignored" as a GHG is because it's cycle time in the atmosphere is in the order of 10 days where as CO2 is ~150yrs.
Realclimate has an interesting discussion about the missing methane.
"I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?"
Remeber all the "begat's"? Someone added them up and figured everything was created a few thousand years ago. However, they are slowly improving, before the Flinstones came along they belived fossils to be the work of Satan. Granted they are a bit behind with the Flintstones idea, but they had to wait for God to create televangelists before the one eyed devil was allowed in the living room.
Evil has always been rationalised by demonising the victims.
Fanatical "-isms" are mankinds worst enemy and best friend all rolled into one. Ruling out apocolyptic and/or FSM senarios, it will probably stay that way until we can teach our kids wisdom as effectively as we teach them technology.
My cousin has been a policewoman in Australia for 20+yrs, she has also won the state female championships in marshal arts and could kick your AC butt senseless without raising a sweat.
What part of "The cops in this case were wrong (IMO) and should be punished" did you not understand? The fact that a couple of cops acted like pigs does not mean we have entered the 1984 zone.
"Using [electric shocks] to force someone to do something is torture."
If you use a broad definition then maybe it is torture but tasers do have valid uses in police work and are far more humane than the alternatives. If I'm wrong then feel free to tell me how a 120lb policewoman is going to stop a 250lb male mental patient from bashing her senseless simply because she looks like his mother.
"So when the police are torturing people in the middle of a school in front of everyone; are we a police state yet?"
Depends on you definition of "police state", if you mean a developed nation whose police force will stop at nothing to impose social order through the rule of law, then all western nations are already "police states". So, the US maybe a "police state" by some definition but lets not kid ourselves that it equates to places like Burma where in a similar incident the victim and a few of his relatives would have been lucky to survive.
The cops in this case were wrong (IMO) and should be punished (eg: can never have legal access to weapons ever again), but don't fall for the false notion that civilization is possible without cops. Case in point is Iraq's police force, instead of reforming it from the top down it was disbanded, the next day the citizens started trashing their own country with impunity, many continue to do so.
Disclaimer: I have never been to the US, and some conservatives on this site have pigeon holed me as a tree-hugging, hippy. However, appealing to 1984 while closing your eyes to basic human nature is politically inspired bullshit, don't ya think?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep it was a trap, what concerns me is the fact that the teacher fell for it. I'd say it was time to call supernanny.
Yep, it's not an "either/or" situation, there is fault on both sides. I am 47 and was belted with straps, canes and backboard rulers. We still gave certain teachers hell and I remeber one kid hitting a teacher (the kid got a pummeling and was expeled), at the other extreme I saw the headmaster punch a kid in the nose for making fun of another teacher.
Some teachers could control a class without lifting a finger or shouting. Unlike the GP these rare teachers knew that "showing kids respect" and "controling kids behaviour" are two different things that work best hand in hand.
It's not like it's a secret or anything, simply stated: Those who can't control themselves have no hope of controling others.
"The climate models have such wide ranges that they predict everything"
Nothing can predict the mind numbing ingnorance of an AC who would give the Pastafarian paradoy the same weight as a physics text book when discussing science.
*===Hey mom, I fed the troll, Jane has to do the dishes.
Damm it, what a screw-up! I already knew from reading Galileo's biography that basically he got in trouble with the pope because the pope interpreted his book as a personal insult, and yet I still managed to paraphrase the "religious dogma" story I was taught ~40yrs ago! Worst still I got the subject matter completely wrong. I also accept that only a fringe element of the church still doubt evolution.
In short, I stand corrected on both the pope and the evolution comment, and am willing to serve as an example of just how powerfull myths can be.
"We Canadians don't tend to get so worked up about individual freedoms when the common good is at stake."
We Aussies have a similar attitude, but I contend that the "common good" is served by a "free speech" as idealised in the US constitution and elwehere. I have no objections to blacklists for adults, provided the adult has a transparent choice. As for the wide availability of child porn and other "evils" on the net, if you find it report it to the cops (or your MP) as evidence of a possible crime.
I firmly belive (ie: I only have anecdotes), that the internet has done more to catch "rock spiders" than it has to encourage them (re: Denmark/Interpol/90's). The most horrifying example of "evil exposed by free speech" I have seen recently has nothing to do with the net or child porn, it was from Bob Geldof's "the four horsemen". ( Part of this fascinating BBC series ).
He warns the squimish and kids to leave the room then tells the story of an African "rebel leader" who steals pre-pubecent children and trains them as a personal child army. Every evening all the towns and villages around the "rebel leader's" mountain camp see an exodous of children. They are headed in all directions five or so miles into the desert where they can sleep on open ground in relative safety.
When the unlucky ones are first kiddnapped, escape routes are made obvious so their tormentors can catch the first few to swallow the bait and try to escape. Those that are caught are taken back to the hut they "escaped" from, the other "fresh recruits" in the hut are then forced to kill the escapee by biting them to death! Those that fail to have meat in their mouth after taking a bite are themselves bitten or killed by their captors, self preservation rapidly ensures the order is followed. Those that survive the "army trainning" are understandably loyal fanatics who perpetuate the "system".
Free speech brings the human coackroaches out in the open and allows us to collectively step on them. Geldof made a dircet plea on the show when he said "I would like someone to go into the mountains, find the warlord, and kill him". Some would say Geldof is guilty of hate speech, inciting violence or that he exploited the ( visibly anxious ) children he filmed and interviewed simply to make a cheap political point. I'm not one of them, I think it should be required viewing in high school media classes and UN meetings.
Yep, there are many people who were taught that "Columbus proved the Earth was round", however this guy worked out it's circumference about 2000yrs before Columbus was born. You'd think all the ancient art depicting the god Atlas carrying a globe would have given the Pope a fucking clue! Perhaps this means that by the year 3500 the church will have accepted evolution.
Opps, forgot this bit...
The "hockey stick" is revealed truth because "state of the art" computer models...
Two minor points here, first the "hockey stick" was published in the early eighties, observed tempratures have closely followed the predicted trend for over 25yrs now. The authority of the graph comes from it's emprically proven track record in predicting average global tempratures. The graph has also been independently reproduced many times using differnt data sets and different techniques, computer models are just one more technique used for confirmation of the original analysis.
The other point about the IPCC is that it most definitely is not based soley on "computer models", you need to do more than skim the executive summary if you want to make any genuine critisims. Oh, and "indisputable" in scientific terms means there are no scientific objections to the methods used, anyone can say "I object" but for scientists to take notice you need to back it up with more than mere assertions.
"Maybe you'd like to point out were in the various GCMs the solar output is predicted or used as an input to the models?"
Not sure what to say here, the sun is included as the main "forcing", it would be an extremly poor model if it wasn't since that is the only significant source of energy reaching our planet. The site I pointed to has plenty of information on solar flux and will point you to the data and methods used, naturally it is somewhat idealised since we are talking about a model.
"Maybe the models ought to be tested by predicting results that are already known? How well do those models do when predicting the observed weather in the 1950's? 60's? Any time period for which the information has already been collected? No? Maybe an inability to predict the past casts doubt on the validity of the model's ability to predict future? Waddya think?"
You seem like an intelligent sort, and the objections you state would be reasonable if your assumption were true. I encourage you to look carefully at the realclimate site and find out for yourself that the testing you suggest was (and still is) a large part of developing the models. If you have some heavy duty computing power (or a lot of time) you can watch hurricanes form in the same areas as they do in real life, nobody tells the computer to create hurricanes they simply form due to the physics of the model and the initial data.
Perhaps there are mechanisms which aren't well understood! Perhaps there are mechanisms which haven't been discovered?!
No "perhaps" about it, you are correct on both counts, anyone who claims to know everything is at best only fooling themselves. However, the imperfect models we are talking about are not based on any "climate religion", they represent the best "educated guess" humanity can muster, they have acurately predicted many events on a regional basis and are regularly used to predict the paths of cyclones. It is foolish in the extreme to base public policy on "climate religion" regardless of wich way the "religion" leans, unfortunately anti-AGW religion has been the political status-quo for the last two decades.
"much easier to generate fear"
As you have clearly demonstrated, it's much easier to post self-serving dribble than it is to post a coherent argument.
Do you realise that the computer chip you used to generate that bit of flamebait would not exist without computer models.
The whole endevour of scientific inquiry consists of applying models to data, just because a model is not perfect does not mean it is not usefull (eg: Newtonian mechanics).
For your edification: Here are some common myths about the hockey stick from the people who created the original (Mann, et al)
That's a nice theory but methane doesn't last very long in the atmosphere, the best scientists working in climatology are still scratching their heads on this one.
"If the Arctic shrinks and the Antarctic grows at a similar rate"
The point is that they don't, also the total volume of ice that matters a lot more than the area it covers. The volume of Antaric ice has changed very little if at all, the increased sea ice in the Antartic may be due to Antartic glaciers moving into the sea at a slightly faster rate, however increased snowfall more or less balances the loss (unlike greenland and the Antartic pennisula where increased snowfall can not keep up with the loss).
"Get your stories straight or don't post..misinformation doesn't benefit anyone"
Not sure what your point is here since the GP didn't mention Anatartica, Arctic ice comes from the Arctic (north), Antartic ice comes from Antartica (south). Since the mid 1950's the Arctic ice cap has lost ~60% of it's volume (although one "skeptic" belives the missing ice is hiding behind Canada somewhere).
There has been very little change in the volume of the Antartic ice cap, however both the Antartic penninsula and Greenland have experinced a +3C rise in average tempratures compared to the +1C global average (accurately predicted by climate models I might add).
"I'm sorry? Methane has a forcing potential of up to 24 times as much of CO2."
It's a moot point unless we are talking huge releases over a short time (eg: Hydrates from the ocean floor), compared to CO2, Methane degrades rapidly in the atmosphere.
It is true that a warmer atmosphere will hold slightly more water vapour. The reason why water vapour is "ignored" as a GHG is because it's cycle time in the atmosphere is in the order of 10 days where as CO2 is ~150yrs.
Realclimate has an interesting discussion about the missing methane.
If they think Hilton is a famous geek, I am not at all surprised they confused plutonium with polonium.
Yeah, someone screwed up. She carried polonium around in her lab coat pockets, not plutonium.
More specifically: A dork is a whale's penis.
"I have read The Bible several times and do not remember hearing anything about our ancestors playing around with dinosaurs?"
Remeber all the "begat's"? Someone added them up and figured everything was created a few thousand years ago. However, they are slowly improving, before the Flinstones came along they belived fossils to be the work of Satan. Granted they are a bit behind with the Flintstones idea, but they had to wait for God to create televangelists before the one eyed devil was allowed in the living room.
"how is that possible anyway"
:)
Frontal lobotamy?
"[ Atheisim ] was used as an excuse"
Evil has always been rationalised by demonising the victims.
Fanatical "-isms" are mankinds worst enemy and best friend all rolled into one. Ruling out apocolyptic and/or FSM senarios, it will probably stay that way until we can teach our kids wisdom as effectively as we teach them technology.
I was aiming for irony.
My cousin has been a policewoman in Australia for 20+yrs, she has also won the state female championships in marshal arts and could kick your AC butt senseless without raising a sweat.
What part of "The cops in this case were wrong (IMO) and should be punished" did you not understand? The fact that a couple of cops acted like pigs does not mean we have entered the 1984 zone.
"Using [electric shocks] to force someone to do something is torture."
If you use a broad definition then maybe it is torture but tasers do have valid uses in police work and are far more humane than the alternatives. If I'm wrong then feel free to tell me how a 120lb policewoman is going to stop a 250lb male mental patient from bashing her senseless simply because she looks like his mother.
"So when the police are torturing people in the middle of a school in front of everyone; are we a police state yet?"
Depends on you definition of "police state", if you mean a developed nation whose police force will stop at nothing to impose social order through the rule of law, then all western nations are already "police states". So, the US maybe a "police state" by some definition but lets not kid ourselves that it equates to places like Burma where in a similar incident the victim and a few of his relatives would have been lucky to survive.
The cops in this case were wrong (IMO) and should be punished (eg: can never have legal access to weapons ever again), but don't fall for the false notion that civilization is possible without cops. Case in point is Iraq's police force, instead of reforming it from the top down it was disbanded, the next day the citizens started trashing their own country with impunity, many continue to do so.
Disclaimer: I have never been to the US, and some conservatives on this site have pigeon holed me as a tree-hugging, hippy. However, appealing to 1984 while closing your eyes to basic human nature is politically inspired bullshit, don't ya think?
Oddly enough R. King had the shit beat out of him because he wouldn't stay down.