The terminology "climate change" goes back to at least the 1950's in the literature, "global warming" first appears in the 70's. There was no confusion until the early 2000's when this silly terminology argument was started by the brain fart of "public opinion guru" Frank Luntz, a GWB advisor who penned a memo advising the Bush administration to use the term "climate change" in preference to "global warming" because...I don't recall why...it "sounded less threatening"......or something equally inane and deceitful.
there's a good chance that people problems become more interesting that software problems
I'm 55, this is true, but it hasn't diminished my interest in software, it's just something else that fascinates me and just happens to be the root cause as to why "work sucks" sometimes. My Dad is 80, a retired mechanical engineer, last we spoke about programming he had got one of his games he wrote in Delphi running on android and was playing with the python graphics library.
Solving coding problems the fun part. The work part is getting the solution to the customer, ironically few engineers are willing to tackle the work problem, or accept other people's solutions to it. So what you generally end up with is an imposed solution from above that doesn't work because the people who wrote the process haven't got a clue how the engineers are currently keeping it together. Rather than tackling the problem by demonstrating a superior answer, the engineers do their best to pretend the work problem doesn't exist.
BTW: If you're solving the "same [coding?] problem over and over again", you're doing it wrong
I mostly agree but I would say that a good engineer provides (and meets) a deadline of his own making. Good managers have clear business plans but they can't create them if software systems randomly pop out of the basement shouting "surprise". The most overlooked and underrated skill for a "professional" engineer is business administration skills (and vica-versa with PHB's). Someone who speaks both languages is far more useful than someone who speaks only his native tongue.
Yeah it's easy to become disillusioned, if you don't have the political clout to organise your own work and "lead by example" to meet their vague goals, then get it or get out. If you do have some influence then vague, numerous, and ever changing management goals are your best weapon against the idiocracy, simply pick the brain farts that give you license to do TheRightThing(tm) and politely deflect the others.
Whom? - A suprising number of well educated people are still unwilling to give Jane Goodall's pioneering work the recognition it deserves. These same people tend to belive animals are little more than automata, some even refuse to belive chimps have a mind of their own.
Fighting for mates is always one vs one, winner take all, and yes they are trying to kill their opponent. War as practised by humans and chimps is fundementally different, it is a coordinated social activity most animals simply don't comprehend let alone practice.
Actually there are a few tiny natural islands in the region where the shoreline is buried under a couple of meters of junk, mostly driftwood and large bits of plastic.
Water. AKA - "The universal solvent". I personally think wind farms are economically viable in many places, but not so much offshore for precisely the reasons you mention.
South Australia is 30% renewable despite a current federal government that is openly hostile to clean energy. The reasoning behind that ideological hostility is not difficult to spot - coal is our #1 export. India has recently declared that large scale PV solar is cheaper than Australian imported brown coal and is switching 400M people to solar over the next decade or so. Prices for coal are way down and mines are currently being mothballed, even those mining the high quality coking coal used to make chinese steel have seen recent mine closures.
The anti-science luddites in charge of this country can see the writing on the wall for the global coal industry, the words "stranded assets" are scaring them shitless. They lack the wisdom and intellectual independence required to plan a smooth transition so they do what politicians do best, fight it tooth an nail with tabloid propaganda and rigged domestic markets.
The slave trade would not have existed without property law. A market that is free of regulation is an oxymoron, what the "free" in free market actually means is that anybody can participate in the market, nothing to do with the type or number of rules that make the market possible.
Every one of the links you have posted comes from a mainstream Aussie media outlet, when those stories stop appearing you have a real corruption problem. The NSW ICAC judicial inquiry has forced the resignation of at least a dozen MP's who took illegal donations from property developers and is still going strong. Now think about real oppression (say) Mugabe or Saddam, they tow the line or risk summary execution.
Internet snooping by cops is a double edged sword, sure it can be used as a tool of oppression (if the political climate is ripe) but it has also been used to solve some high profile murder/rape cases. In the Jill Megan (sic?) case the cops didn't spy on anyone, they simply explained the situation to the banks (on the weekend) and the banks voluntarily gave them what they needed to track the bastard down.
Disclaimer: I have a female cousin who has served in the Victorian police for over 3 decades. I'm not claiming all Aussie cops are saints, but certainly the vast majority have their heart in the right place and are doing a tough job as best they can.
PS: Bad form to reply to own post but I'd also like to say I agree with your post, those consideration are a matter of due-diligence in my mind.
Of course you will also want to apply the same standards to the claims made by those upholding the status quo. After all, the FF industry is one of the most powerful economic entities on the planet, it has a lot more power and wealth than Gore, they are at least an order of magnitude higher in assets than the clean energy industry as a whole.
We have already seen the US senate abused in a failed attempt to discredit a single scientific paper. What I would like to see now is a repeat of the "tobacco trials" for the coal industry and their pet politicians (yes senator Inhofe, I'm looking at you)..
Another way of looking at it is that Gore puts his money where his mouth is, and considering the profits are fed back into his educational charity it's hard to see how it has given him more power and wealth than (say) a post-political career as a corporate lobbyist. For the most part I find American's in particular are generally for/against his charitable work based not on the contents of his documentaries, but on the perceived colour of his politics. The rest of the world don't really know him as as a politician, and are therefore less inclined to instinctively "shoot the messenger".
Yes, I know scientists don't appreciate having to come out of their research labs where they are doing actual real work to do stuff like that, but it's important. It's all the more important the more impact you believe your research has to society as a whole.
Agree, now if you do some fact checking you will find the vast majority of climate scientists have already come out of their labs to loudly defend Gore's work, I'm not sure what your reading/viewing habits are, but you obviously missed the last 10yrs of debate, so the question is now - what will you tell your kids? - Can you set a good example by demonstrating a true skeptic changes his mind when confronted with inconvenient facts, or will misplaced pride take you down the creationist road?
I agree with your basic premise but most AGW advocates ignore and will not address contrary evidence, preferring instead to ridicule and cast aspersions, as you do.
Increasing seasonal sea ice in Antarctica is not "contra-evidence", it's a prediction that most models have been making for over 20yrs now, the mechanism that causes the counter intuitive result is well understood. So called "skeptics" are flogging a dead horse in their attempts to cite it as some sort of "smoking gun" that climate scientists are attempting to hide. The often intentionally misleading claim is ranked at #10 on skeptical sciences list of most popular climate myths.
As for Al Gore, any internet idiot can play "gottcha science" by taking words out of context and deliberately misinterpreting them. However the scientists who were lead authors of the IPCC reports that Gore's documentary was based on gave it a good review for it's representation of the report. Of course there were minor errors, and yes, the scientists pointed them out. The reason Gore shared the Nobel prize with the IPCC is that he put the IPCC's monumental lit-review effort squarely at the center of public policy debate.
Useful idiots? - As someone who has followed climate science with interest since the late 70's, Gore's documentary was an excellent (but imperfect) explanation of the science and it's real world consequences. It's a shame so many slashdotters mindlessly join in when the Gore bashing starts, he's the only well educated geek that has come close to sitting in the whitehouse for a very long time. History will admire his charitable public education efforts, even if most american's currently do not.
Disclaimer: I've been well known on slashdot for commenting on climate related stories for around 15yrs now, I'm not and have never been an "AGW advocate", I'm a science advocate.
If it saves the life of an imbecile who can't trouble to buckle up it MAY be worthwhile, but for anyone of normal intelligence it is a liability.
To understand why this "imbecile" has air bags, first put your seat belt on, now see if you can tap your head gently against the door pillar, now imagine tapping it at 50mph. As for the steering wheel bag it's not there to stop you from leaving your seat and being slammed into the steering column, that's the seat belt's job. The wheel bag is there because "collapsible" steering columns still have a nasty tendency to intrude into the cabin, significantly reducing the the wheel to face gap.
Disclaimer: I think keep my "liability". Sure it may one day cost me "an arm and a leg" but that's a perfectly rational insurance arrangement given the alternatives.
RE: my other reply, I've heard that in the US some of the bags are set to ridiculously low speeds, something like 10-15mph, if that's what happened to you then I think you have a valid point, set at 25-30mph they are definitely an "intelligent" option ad serve a different role to seat belts. In fact a properly designed air bag assumes the person is strapped into their seat.
No offence but I found the part about your glasses leaving your face for a split second fascinating, did it happen in that weird "slow motion" phase of the car crash or did you not even see it because it was so fast?
Wow sounds like you have actually read 1984. Big brother is an unseen but omnipresent demigod who will strap a live rat to your face if he sees you doing something he doesn't like. 'Animal Farm' is a more accurate criticism of the modern democratic state that arises from the revolutionary ashes of such demigods..
They teach civics on Fox these days, apparently there's something called an "activist judge" that can rewrite laws on a whim. According to Fox, these activist judges always make the wrong decision for the wrong reason.
To be fair though, academic achievement is probably more important than intelligence, at least for some things.
I'm quite proud of my degree but the only thing it demonstrates is that I can follow instructions, it says nothing about my ability to hunt Mammoths or evict cave bears from my new home.
Slashdot Mirror
evitaleR si emiT
Pro Tip: Turn your keyboard around.
Dr Seuss makes more sense than the comment thread.
Nice post, and brave too considering the hostility and derision in the comments above. Good on you for standing up and being counted.
The terminology "climate change" goes back to at least the 1950's in the literature, "global warming" first appears in the 70's. There was no confusion until the early 2000's when this silly terminology argument was started by the brain fart of "public opinion guru" Frank Luntz, a GWB advisor who penned a memo advising the Bush administration to use the term "climate change" in preference to "global warming" because...I don't recall why...it "sounded less threatening"......or something equally inane and deceitful.
there's a good chance that people problems become more interesting that software problems
I'm 55, this is true, but it hasn't diminished my interest in software, it's just something else that fascinates me and just happens to be the root cause as to why "work sucks" sometimes. My Dad is 80, a retired mechanical engineer, last we spoke about programming he had got one of his games he wrote in Delphi running on android and was playing with the python graphics library.
Solving coding problems the fun part. The work part is getting the solution to the customer, ironically few engineers are willing to tackle the work problem, or accept other people's solutions to it. So what you generally end up with is an imposed solution from above that doesn't work because the people who wrote the process haven't got a clue how the engineers are currently keeping it together. Rather than tackling the problem by demonstrating a superior answer, the engineers do their best to pretend the work problem doesn't exist.
BTW: If you're solving the "same [coding?] problem over and over again", you're doing it wrong
I mostly agree but I would say that a good engineer provides (and meets) a deadline of his own making. Good managers have clear business plans but they can't create them if software systems randomly pop out of the basement shouting "surprise". The most overlooked and underrated skill for a "professional" engineer is business administration skills (and vica-versa with PHB's). Someone who speaks both languages is far more useful than someone who speaks only his native tongue.
Yeah it's easy to become disillusioned, if you don't have the political clout to organise your own work and "lead by example" to meet their vague goals, then get it or get out. If you do have some influence then vague, numerous, and ever changing management goals are your best weapon against the idiocracy, simply pick the brain farts that give you license to do TheRightThing(tm) and politely deflect the others.
*you - the royal version.
Whom? - A suprising number of well educated people are still unwilling to give Jane Goodall's pioneering work the recognition it deserves. These same people tend to belive animals are little more than automata, some even refuse to belive chimps have a mind of their own.
Most animals fight for mates.
Fighting for mates is always one vs one, winner take all, and yes they are trying to kill their opponent. War as practised by humans and chimps is fundementally different, it is a coordinated social activity most animals simply don't comprehend let alone practice.
Actually there are a few tiny natural islands in the region where the shoreline is buried under a couple of meters of junk, mostly driftwood and large bits of plastic.
Water. AKA - "The universal solvent". I personally think wind farms are economically viable in many places, but not so much offshore for precisely the reasons you mention.
South Australia is 30% renewable despite a current federal government that is openly hostile to clean energy. The reasoning behind that ideological hostility is not difficult to spot - coal is our #1 export. India has recently declared that large scale PV solar is cheaper than Australian imported brown coal and is switching 400M people to solar over the next decade or so. Prices for coal are way down and mines are currently being mothballed, even those mining the high quality coking coal used to make chinese steel have seen recent mine closures.
The anti-science luddites in charge of this country can see the writing on the wall for the global coal industry, the words "stranded assets" are scaring them shitless. They lack the wisdom and intellectual independence required to plan a smooth transition so they do what politicians do best, fight it tooth an nail with tabloid propaganda and rigged domestic markets.
The slave trade would not have existed without property law. A market that is free of regulation is an oxymoron, what the "free" in free market actually means is that anybody can participate in the market, nothing to do with the type or number of rules that make the market possible.
Every one of the links you have posted comes from a mainstream Aussie media outlet, when those stories stop appearing you have a real corruption problem. The NSW ICAC judicial inquiry has forced the resignation of at least a dozen MP's who took illegal donations from property developers and is still going strong. Now think about real oppression (say) Mugabe or Saddam, they tow the line or risk summary execution.
Internet snooping by cops is a double edged sword, sure it can be used as a tool of oppression (if the political climate is ripe) but it has also been used to solve some high profile murder/rape cases. In the Jill Megan (sic?) case the cops didn't spy on anyone, they simply explained the situation to the banks (on the weekend) and the banks voluntarily gave them what they needed to track the bastard down.
Disclaimer: I have a female cousin who has served in the Victorian police for over 3 decades. I'm not claiming all Aussie cops are saints, but certainly the vast majority have their heart in the right place and are doing a tough job as best they can.
PS: Bad form to reply to own post but I'd also like to say I agree with your post, those consideration are a matter of due-diligence in my mind.
Of course you will also want to apply the same standards to the claims made by those upholding the status quo. After all, the FF industry is one of the most powerful economic entities on the planet, it has a lot more power and wealth than Gore, they are at least an order of magnitude higher in assets than the clean energy industry as a whole.
We have already seen the US senate abused in a failed attempt to discredit a single scientific paper. What I would like to see now is a repeat of the "tobacco trials" for the coal industry and their pet politicians (yes senator Inhofe, I'm looking at you)..
Another way of looking at it is that Gore puts his money where his mouth is, and considering the profits are fed back into his educational charity it's hard to see how it has given him more power and wealth than (say) a post-political career as a corporate lobbyist. For the most part I find American's in particular are generally for/against his charitable work based not on the contents of his documentaries, but on the perceived colour of his politics. The rest of the world don't really know him as as a politician, and are therefore less inclined to instinctively "shoot the messenger".
Regrettably, there has been little to no efforts made from the scientific community to distance itself from Gore's extreme proclamations and warnings.
Sigh, the scientific community almost unanimously came out of the lab to praise the documentary because they felt it was a "bloody accurate" representation of their work.
Yes, I know scientists don't appreciate having to come out of their research labs where they are doing actual real work to do stuff like that, but it's important. It's all the more important the more impact you believe your research has to society as a whole.
Agree, now if you do some fact checking you will find the vast majority of climate scientists have already come out of their labs to loudly defend Gore's work, I'm not sure what your reading/viewing habits are, but you obviously missed the last 10yrs of debate, so the question is now - what will you tell your kids? - Can you set a good example by demonstrating a true skeptic changes his mind when confronted with inconvenient facts, or will misplaced pride take you down the creationist road?
I agree with your basic premise but most AGW advocates ignore and will not address contrary evidence, preferring instead to ridicule and cast aspersions, as you do.
Increasing seasonal sea ice in Antarctica is not "contra-evidence", it's a prediction that most models have been making for over 20yrs now, the mechanism that causes the counter intuitive result is well understood. So called "skeptics" are flogging a dead horse in their attempts to cite it as some sort of "smoking gun" that climate scientists are attempting to hide. The often intentionally misleading claim is ranked at #10 on skeptical sciences list of most popular climate myths.
As for Al Gore, any internet idiot can play "gottcha science" by taking words out of context and deliberately misinterpreting them. However the scientists who were lead authors of the IPCC reports that Gore's documentary was based on gave it a good review for it's representation of the report. Of course there were minor errors, and yes, the scientists pointed them out. The reason Gore shared the Nobel prize with the IPCC is that he put the IPCC's monumental lit-review effort squarely at the center of public policy debate.
Useful idiots? - As someone who has followed climate science with interest since the late 70's, Gore's documentary was an excellent (but imperfect) explanation of the science and it's real world consequences. It's a shame so many slashdotters mindlessly join in when the Gore bashing starts, he's the only well educated geek that has come close to sitting in the whitehouse for a very long time. History will admire his charitable public education efforts, even if most american's currently do not.
Disclaimer: I've been well known on slashdot for commenting on climate related stories for around 15yrs now, I'm not and have never been an "AGW advocate", I'm a science advocate.
If it saves the life of an imbecile who can't trouble to buckle up it MAY be worthwhile, but for anyone of normal intelligence it is a liability.
To understand why this "imbecile" has air bags, first put your seat belt on, now see if you can tap your head gently against the door pillar, now imagine tapping it at 50mph. As for the steering wheel bag it's not there to stop you from leaving your seat and being slammed into the steering column, that's the seat belt's job. The wheel bag is there because "collapsible" steering columns still have a nasty tendency to intrude into the cabin, significantly reducing the the wheel to face gap.
Disclaimer: I think keep my "liability". Sure it may one day cost me "an arm and a leg" but that's a perfectly rational insurance arrangement given the alternatives.
RE: my other reply, I've heard that in the US some of the bags are set to ridiculously low speeds, something like 10-15mph, if that's what happened to you then I think you have a valid point, set at 25-30mph they are definitely an "intelligent" option ad serve a different role to seat belts. In fact a properly designed air bag assumes the person is strapped into their seat.
No offence but I found the part about your glasses leaving your face for a split second fascinating, did it happen in that weird "slow motion" phase of the car crash or did you not even see it because it was so fast?
technology is merely a tool.
Wow sounds like you have actually read 1984. Big brother is an unseen but omnipresent demigod who will strap a live rat to your face if he sees you doing something he doesn't like. 'Animal Farm' is a more accurate criticism of the modern democratic state that arises from the revolutionary ashes of such demigods..
Where does the notion come from
They teach civics on Fox these days, apparently there's something called an "activist judge" that can rewrite laws on a whim. According to Fox, these activist judges always make the wrong decision for the wrong reason.
Yep, the eye is basically a part of the brain.
I'm still waiting for lead to transmute to gold
You can do that nowadays, it's the reason why nuclear power is sometimes called "The philospohers stone".
To be fair though, academic achievement is probably more important than intelligence, at least for some things.
I'm quite proud of my degree but the only thing it demonstrates is that I can follow instructions, it says nothing about my ability to hunt Mammoths or evict cave bears from my new home.