That's true about all facts, whether identified by denialists or alarmists.
Not sure who you mean by "alarmists" unless you mean those people who erroneously claim that we don't know what has caused the recent warm spike (and we are therefore doomed). I just lump those deniers in with the rest of the gibbering mass of deniers.
If you'd like to talk about particular ones, however, please, see my challenge in the post higher up [slashdot.org].
You aren't in a position to proffer challenges. Your only role is to prove either (a) that the laws of physics can be defied or (b) that a vast time travelling zombie conspiracy rages across the planet, and the invisible ghost of Tyndall has tricked us into believing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
The zombie Tyndall version is slightly more entertaining, but I'm sure the magical explanation will amuse as well. I leave the choice up to you. Now hop to it.
I strongly suspect that you will find most American and British conservatives are Protestants.
Denying Climate Change requires you to lie, to perpetuate lies, to frame lies in such a way that the truth is obscured, to slander others and bear false witness. This is incompatible with Protestant theology.
The point is that the pontiff's — or, for that matter, any other non-scientist celebrity — agreement with a supposedly scientific argument, adds no more weight to it, than a disagreement by the same celebrity would have removed.
That's right.
Claims by denialists: be they celebrities, shock jocks, politicians, random guys on the internet, make not one speck of difference to the actual science, since the laws of physics can't be defied, no matter the the strength of opinion otherwise.
Point of order, Brandis in NO SENSE the ACT Attorney General. The ACT Government does a lot of strange things (think "monorail! monorail! monorail!") but neither party in the ACT would field Brandis or anyone resembling Brandis as a candidate let alone give him a position of authority.
I love the framing of this issue: as if only a fringe of people think global warming is an issue, whilst 'we' sit skeptically waiting for a presentation on how 'we' benefit from taking action.
Grow up, and learn how the world really works.
Nobody is going to come back with a half way narrative, a compromised view of global warming for you to sign up to. Nobody is going to say: "Oh I see you won't agree that 5 degrees of warming is too much - let's say 7.5 degrees is the acceptable limit, deal?" Neither is the issue just going to quietly go away if you ignore it for long enough. It's a simple, brutal fact - the warming just keeps getting more and more obvious.
Grow up, get over it, and get on with it.
Otherwise, you can wait for us to get angry enough to sue you for the damage you've caused, take your stuff, and use the funds to make the necessary changes.
We stopped sending humans to space because technology progressed and humans are no longer needed.
How can you say that technology has receded? That is so far from the facts that I cannot believe that you said that deliberately.
Did you forget that last year we landed on a Comet? Did you forgot the Titan Landing, the minor issue of our presence on Mars for what - 15 continuous years now? Did you forget Cassin, Voyager, MESSENGER? Did you forget that even at this moment we are on the brink of our first good look at Pluto?
Since 1969 there have been people living on Earth who have visited another world. It would be a terrible failure of humanity if one day this was no longer true.
Why is that? We don't consider the passing of other outdated technology as a failure. For example, "It would be a terrible failure of humanity if one day no one was ale to make a buggy whip"
Sure. Once you've done the numbers to support your hypothesis then get back to us. At the moment, to be honest, it sounds like more wild speculation. Let's say your hypothesis is correct and undersea volcanoes have reduced the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Wouldn't this act in such a way as to increase the sensitivity of the climate to anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Funny, because the science that I learned about in college was ALL ABOUT being constantly questioned.
Presumably they mentioned at your place of learning that to question science you need to use science, not superstition: e.g. "I don't trust this science because that scientists has a beard and he might be a hippy"
When climate alarmists stop pretending that the dispute is over the degree of human influence on climate, and how much different countries should spend to mitigate anthropogenic climate change (or other kinds!), they might start to get traction with skeptics. Also when they start acting like the situation is as bad as they claim it is.
Funny how the view of 'the dispute' is so inconsistent. You say the dispute is not about the science, yet there are denialists posting in this very thread who say that it IS: this guy , or this guy or this guy. You guys need to sit down and nut and what it is, exactly, that you have against the more commonly held position on climate. At the moment, you look like clowns.
I know that when I used an electric sous vide cooker to make pork chops for dinner last night, it was worse for the climate than if I ate raw vegetables, and better than if I grilled a slab of steak over a bonfire. I know that living in the suburbs emits more greenhouse gases than living in a tiny apartment in a big city. I am thoroughly unconvinced that forcing most people to live like the alarmists claim we should (but usually don't live themselves) will yield the claimed benefits, or be worth the costs even if the benefits would be as claimed.
If I wanted to classify your position I would call it "superstition". It is, essentially a belief that climate change is about good people and bad people. Various (curiously unnamed) people you claim are "alarmists" and are hyprocritical, and therefore the scientific basis of their position is wrong. One would think that if the science of mitigation were actually wrong, if the economic model was wrong, that you could find and demonstrate those flaws, rather than engage in bone pointing ceremonies.
Not only the data and the conclusions, the models themselves. If you use a model to analyze the data and draw some conclusions from it and this model is unable to predict phenomena correctly you can certainly become skeptic about the conclusions you drawn from it.
What phenomena?
Recently, many models were put exactly in that position.
Which models?
Calling everyone a denier because he/she express some doubts about the conclusions of a model without any decent prediction capability is certainly an abuse of language and even bullying toward legitimate skepticism.
That is not the denier position. The denier position is that a (pre-supposed) lack of correlation between model predictions and observed climate means that we can continue dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and nothing significant will happen. The deniers would have us accept their predictions about climate sensitivity whilst simultaneously claiming that science is insufficient to make predictions. The denier claim (that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will not cause significant warming) is something that ought to be handled with healthy scepticism.
Because what a lack of correlation actually means is that we can't predict what will happen if we continue our buildup of atmospheric CO2. We know there will be some effect (by thermodynamics) but can't predict the scope of it. The only logical conclusion is that to avoid potential disaster we need to stop doing that. Right Now.
If the model deniers are right and there is no correlation then what they are really saying is that we must take immediate action to mitigate the risk of disastrous warming.
More like "War on Poor People/Pensioners","War on Small Business", "War on Manufacturing", "War on Wind Farms", "War on Students".
But of course, the fact that this government has announced an intent to do this is almost certain death for the idea. They are so disorganised and so incompetent that they could never get it done.
More generally, he stated that there is no actual data to support the notion that race does not contribute to intelligence, making a specific reference to Africans, and which happens to be a politically incorrect notion, but is still an accurate statement.
So he is saying that Africans are more intelligent than Europeans?
That climate science, to date, has been poor at prognostication is indisputably true.
Actually the point of this discussion is that the statement One must note that environmental science is best at observation, and typically poor at prognostication. is in fact unsubstantiated. Simply repeating that assertion multiple times does not substantiate it.
The army is likely to be happy enough to put down a rebellion if the rebels are shooting at them. Much harder to convince a military to gun down an unarmed populace.
Yes, it's there (let's say it remains there) to lure the populace into a false sense of security and enable tyranny. And, based on the current tyranny and lack of any real popular uprising, it is obviously serving it's purpose.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
No. You need to be able to present your research without being slaughtered for it. When it comes to opinion, scientists have the same rights and are subject to the same criticisms as anybody else.
How many white people do you see in professional sports?
Heaps.
Cricket, for instance, is dominated by white guys in Australia and England. On the other hand, India, Pakistan and the West Indies have very strong teams - why? Because cricket favours places where kids can play the game in the street. Genetics don't enter into it.
Another example: Aussie Rules versus Rugby. Aussie Rules has a disproportionate number of Aboriginal players, whereas Rugby (in Australia/NZ) is dominated by Maoris and Islanders (Samoans, Vanuatans etc). Are Aboriginals genetically pre-disposed toward Aussie Rules, or is it actually because they grow up playing and loving Aussies Rules (Whereas Samoans grow up loving and playing rugby)?
Describe SPECIFICALLY what it is that humans can do better than robots in the vacuum of space : And I don't mean meaningless tripe, I mean practical tasks to do with the point of going into space: to explore. Show how the need to perform this task justifies the extra expense associated.
[no response]
I take it from you lack of response that you cannot think of anything?
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
Here is what you wrote: Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space.
I've highlighted the section that caught my eye. How much does going underwater cost? I couldn't find any figures related to the costs of divers going underwater to repair deep sea drilling rigs. I did uncover the cost of James Camerons DeepSea challenge (http://deepseanews.com/2012/04/shouldnt-we-be-more-skeptical-of-the-deepchallenger-dive/) which works out around 5 million dollars. I'm sure you would agree that 5 million dollars a person would not get you to LEO, let alone beyond LEO (which, thanks to the necessary delta V) starts at a floor 10x that of LEO.
In short, I was being generous.
Since you got this so wrong, I need not reply any further.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true about all facts, whether identified by denialists or alarmists.
Not sure who you mean by "alarmists" unless you mean those people who erroneously claim that we don't know what has caused the recent warm spike (and we are therefore doomed). I just lump those deniers in with the rest of the gibbering mass of deniers.
If you'd like to talk about particular ones, however, please, see my challenge in the post higher up [slashdot.org].
You aren't in a position to proffer challenges. Your only role is to prove either (a) that the laws of physics can be defied or (b) that a vast time travelling zombie conspiracy rages across the planet, and the invisible ghost of Tyndall has tricked us into believing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
The zombie Tyndall version is slightly more entertaining, but I'm sure the magical explanation will amuse as well. I leave the choice up to you. Now hop to it.
I strongly suspect that you will find most American and British conservatives are Protestants.
Denying Climate Change requires you to lie, to perpetuate lies, to frame lies in such a way that the truth is obscured, to slander others and bear false witness. This is incompatible with Protestant theology.
The point is that the pontiff's — or, for that matter, any other non-scientist celebrity — agreement with a supposedly scientific argument, adds no more weight to it, than a disagreement by the same celebrity would have removed.
That's right.
Claims by denialists: be they celebrities, shock jocks, politicians, random guys on the internet, make not one speck of difference to the actual science, since the laws of physics can't be defied, no matter the the strength of opinion otherwise.
It turns out that facts are, in fact, factual.
Point of order, Brandis in NO SENSE the ACT Attorney General. The ACT Government does a lot of strange things (think "monorail! monorail! monorail!") but neither party in the ACT would field Brandis or anyone resembling Brandis as a candidate let alone give him a position of authority.
Grow up, and learn how the world really works.
Nobody is going to come back with a half way narrative, a compromised view of global warming for you to sign up to. Nobody is going to say: "Oh I see you won't agree that 5 degrees of warming is too much - let's say 7.5 degrees is the acceptable limit, deal?" Neither is the issue just going to quietly go away if you ignore it for long enough. It's a simple, brutal fact - the warming just keeps getting more and more obvious.
Grow up, get over it, and get on with it.
Otherwise, you can wait for us to get angry enough to sue you for the damage you've caused, take your stuff, and use the funds to make the necessary changes.
How bout them apples?
In order to avoid offending all religious beliefs, all religions must end.
Including you own, of course. Good luck with your war on thoughtcrime.
America has lost the capability of being able to reproduce the original Mercury flight of Alan Shepard.
That's not true. It's not that we can't. We just don't want to.
How can you say that technology has receded? That is so far from the facts that I cannot believe that you said that deliberately.
Did you forget that last year we landed on a Comet? Did you forgot the Titan Landing, the minor issue of our presence on Mars for what - 15 continuous years now? Did you forget Cassin, Voyager, MESSENGER? Did you forget that even at this moment we are on the brink of our first good look at Pluto?
You live in a bizarre world.
What does that have to do with it? We can mine far better using robots than humans. That's kinda my point
It seems like you couldn't argue my point, so chose to quibble about nonsense. No prize for you.
Since 1969 there have been people living on Earth who have visited another world. It would be a terrible failure of humanity if one day this was no longer true.
Why is that? We don't consider the passing of other outdated technology as a failure. For example, "It would be a terrible failure of humanity if one day no one was ale to make a buggy whip"
Sure. Once you've done the numbers to support your hypothesis then get back to us. At the moment, to be honest, it sounds like more wild speculation. Let's say your hypothesis is correct and undersea volcanoes have reduced the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Wouldn't this act in such a way as to increase the sensitivity of the climate to anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Funny, because the science that I learned about in college was ALL ABOUT being constantly questioned.
Presumably they mentioned at your place of learning that to question science you need to use science, not superstition: e.g. "I don't trust this science because that scientists has a beard and he might be a hippy"
When climate alarmists stop pretending that the dispute is over the degree of human influence on climate, and how much different countries should spend to mitigate anthropogenic climate change (or other kinds!), they might start to get traction with skeptics. Also when they start acting like the situation is as bad as they claim it is.
Funny how the view of 'the dispute' is so inconsistent. You say the dispute is not about the science, yet there are denialists posting in this very thread who say that it IS: this guy , or this guy or this guy. You guys need to sit down and nut and what it is, exactly, that you have against the more commonly held position on climate. At the moment, you look like clowns.
I know that when I used an electric sous vide cooker to make pork chops for dinner last night, it was worse for the climate than if I ate raw vegetables, and better than if I grilled a slab of steak over a bonfire. I know that living in the suburbs emits more greenhouse gases than living in a tiny apartment in a big city. I am thoroughly unconvinced that forcing most people to live like the alarmists claim we should (but usually don't live themselves) will yield the claimed benefits, or be worth the costs even if the benefits would be as claimed.
If I wanted to classify your position I would call it "superstition". It is, essentially a belief that climate change is about good people and bad people. Various (curiously unnamed) people you claim are "alarmists" and are hyprocritical, and therefore the scientific basis of their position is wrong. One would think that if the science of mitigation were actually wrong, if the economic model was wrong, that you could find and demonstrate those flaws, rather than engage in bone pointing ceremonies.
Not only the data and the conclusions, the models themselves. If you use a model to analyze the data and draw some conclusions from it and this model is unable to predict phenomena correctly you can certainly become skeptic about the conclusions you drawn from it.
What phenomena?
Recently, many models were put exactly in that position.
Which models?
Calling everyone a denier because he/she express some doubts about the conclusions of a model without any decent prediction capability is certainly an abuse of language and even bullying toward legitimate skepticism.
That is not the denier position. The denier position is that a (pre-supposed) lack of correlation between model predictions and observed climate means that we can continue dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and nothing significant will happen. The deniers would have us accept their predictions about climate sensitivity whilst simultaneously claiming that science is insufficient to make predictions. The denier claim (that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will not cause significant warming) is something that ought to be handled with healthy scepticism.
Because what a lack of correlation actually means is that we can't predict what will happen if we continue our buildup of atmospheric CO2. We know there will be some effect (by thermodynamics) but can't predict the scope of it. The only logical conclusion is that to avoid potential disaster we need to stop doing that. Right Now.
If the model deniers are right and there is no correlation then what they are really saying is that we must take immediate action to mitigate the risk of disastrous warming.
All that is needed for manned exploration of the solar system is a transport spaceship,
Incorrect.
But of course, the fact that this government has announced an intent to do this is almost certain death for the idea. They are so disorganised and so incompetent that they could never get it done.
Its just as valid to claim from that basis that Africans are smarter than Europeans. After all, the data did not rule that out.
More generally, he stated that there is no actual data to support the notion that race does not contribute to intelligence, making a specific reference to Africans, and which happens to be a politically incorrect notion, but is still an accurate statement.
So he is saying that Africans are more intelligent than Europeans?
That climate science, to date, has been poor at prognostication is indisputably true.
Actually the point of this discussion is that the statement One must note that environmental science is best at observation, and typically poor at prognostication. is in fact unsubstantiated. Simply repeating that assertion multiple times does not substantiate it.
The army is likely to be happy enough to put down a rebellion if the rebels are shooting at them. Much harder to convince a military to gun down an unarmed populace.
Yes, it's there (let's say it remains there) to lure the populace into a false sense of security and enable tyranny. And, based on the current tyranny and lack of any real popular uprising, it is obviously serving it's purpose.
For science to work you must be able to state an unpopular opinion and not get slaughtered for it.
No. You need to be able to present your research without being slaughtered for it. When it comes to opinion, scientists have the same rights and are subject to the same criticisms as anybody else.
How many white people do you see in professional sports?
Heaps.
Cricket, for instance, is dominated by white guys in Australia and England. On the other hand, India, Pakistan and the West Indies have very strong teams - why? Because cricket favours places where kids can play the game in the street. Genetics don't enter into it.
Another example: Aussie Rules versus Rugby. Aussie Rules has a disproportionate number of Aboriginal players, whereas Rugby (in Australia/NZ) is dominated by Maoris and Islanders (Samoans, Vanuatans etc). Are Aboriginals genetically pre-disposed toward Aussie Rules, or is it actually because they grow up playing and loving Aussies Rules (Whereas Samoans grow up loving and playing rugby)?
Describe SPECIFICALLY what it is that humans can do better than robots in the vacuum of space : And I don't mean meaningless tripe, I mean practical tasks to do with the point of going into space: to explore. Show how the need to perform this task justifies the extra expense associated.
[no response]
I take it from you lack of response that you cannot think of anything?
It would help if you actually read what I wrote:
Here is what you wrote: Deep sea drilling even has divers that go underwater for weeks at a time for critical repairs... doing things that are enormously expensive and even approaching costs for sending astronauts into space. I've highlighted the section that caught my eye. How much does going underwater cost? I couldn't find any figures related to the costs of divers going underwater to repair deep sea drilling rigs. I did uncover the cost of James Camerons DeepSea challenge (http://deepseanews.com/2012/04/shouldnt-we-be-more-skeptical-of-the-deepchallenger-dive/) which works out around 5 million dollars. I'm sure you would agree that 5 million dollars a person would not get you to LEO, let alone beyond LEO (which, thanks to the necessary delta V) starts at a floor 10x that of LEO.
In short, I was being generous.
Since you got this so wrong, I need not reply any further.
You don't get to decide.
Building a steam train in the age of bullet trains is not entirely a boast worthy exercise.