Small boats regularly depart illegally from Indonesian beaches,
It 's not illegal to leave Indonesia by boat.
heading for other countries and when told about it, the Indonesians show zero interest in arresting and charging the crews and passengers or even taking them back.
People travel by boat between countries all the time. In my country (also Australia) 30,541 boats arrived here in the 2011/2012 FY. That's just the commercial vessels, not including pleasure craft, navy visits etc.
Of course the Indonesians aren't interested in stopping something that is not illegal or immoral, or damaging to their economy, or ours.
ind a definition of extreme which the AGW people are happy to stick to for 60 years.
You mean 'scientists'. By AGW people, you mean 'scientists'. And there is no need for us to "find a definition". They've published their findings, along with a glossary to capture the menaing of the word 'extreme'.
Have you published your findings?
Besides if air temps haven't been going up as fast as they were scenario'd as going up, what's causing the "freak" weather?
I see that you've reacted with some agression to what most people would regard as a mild observation, attempting to instruct me on my personal conduct and outlook, and imagining that I would be taken aback by personal attack and screed.
Interesting.
Not really. If it was men, you'd say they were assholes too each other.
No we wouldn't. 'Bitch' has exactly the same connotation for either gender, it is just used as an insult.
Stop trying to read more into it than there is asshole.
Interesting. According to your own nomenclature you assume I'm male.
And no need for me to 'read anything into it', here is the relevant section from the article:
According to Horvath: “I met her and almost immediately the conversation that I thought was supposed to be causal turned into something very inappropriate. She began telling me about how she informs her husband’s decision-making at GitHub, how I better not leave GitHub and write something bad about them, and how she had been told by her husband that she should intervene with my relationship to be sure I was ‘made very happy’ so that I wouldn’t quit and say something nasty about her husband’s company because ‘he had worked so hard.’”
In short, the problem was that this structure in which someone outside of scrutiny employs devious means to affect the structure and direction of the company makes it unworkable for employers - they are not accountable to this person, yet they are answerable to her. To carry on in this manner is to court disaster.
Horvath called the situation, aptly, “bananas.”
.
I wouldn't work there if I was pulled aside for that sort of conversation (apparently approved in secret by one the founders) and I would think it was bananas as well.
There are different terms used for people with differences... and guess what no how much you like it, men and women are different from each other... I know this because I Can't pass a bowling ball through my penis, yet my wife can spit out a baby (with a lot of effort!).
What an impressively meaningless anecdote. Grow up.
Pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like we're all exactly the same and you'll find yourself a lot less concerned with being politically correct to the point of uselessness.
So you feel threatened by 'political correctness' - get over it. You lost that argument. Do you want to know why you lost? You weren't smart enough to listen to what the other side was saying, thus carried on as if nothing could possibly change, and then it did. Now you are bitching about it.
Thankfully the Attorney General only has the power to enforce laws, not to write laws (that's the job of the elected senators and ministers).
Yes. How fortunate that Senator George Brandis isn't you know, a member of the Senate.
But seriously, of all the inner circle of petrified, ideological nincompoops in the new government this guy is up with the best of them. He has no idea about law, how law should be made or enforced, the intent of law and the notion of correct legal practice and judicial ruling. Just the person you want, you know, for the attorney general.
He was an Q & A the other night, arguing for the removal of the racial villification clauses form the Racial Discrimination acts. Why? Because one of his cronies had been found guilty under this section. He said it out loud. Other more apparently learned members of the panel schooled him on the notion of "the rule of law".
No, George. It's not the role of the law to protect your racist buddies when they make false claims against named persons and then publish them, explcitly alleging that their alleged behaviour is typical of their race (or worse, racial mixture)
You claim that you don't care about people doing stuff like BASE jumping, mountain climbing up Mt. Everest, or doing other potentially life threatening things, yet you complain about people going into space on their own dime.... with or without voluntary sponsorships from others. Yet here you go and say precisely the opposite.
Don't manufacture a controversy that doesn't exist.
As for Mars One, I think those guys are full of it and don't know what they are doing, and legitimate engineers and even fans are trying to offer help yet it is being rejected in favor of fluff and pomp. That is why Mars One is going to fail, not because they are trying to attempt something foolish. I'll also agree that there will be scam artists and people with less than honorable intentions who are trying to milk those with a dream of someday working and living in space, some of whom have some serious money to offer as well.
It seems that we mostly agree.
Again, I am not asking you for anything explicitly other than to suggest if you want to help, work with me and others who want to go into space. If you think it is stupid, move along so you don't get in my way. And please, give me the permission and opportunity to do this kind of stuff instead of holding a gun to my head and telling me I can't go into space. It doesn't matter if you do it personally or have laws enacted and a government thug does that instead... it is the same thing in the end.
I'm not holding a gun to you head. Want to know why you aren't going into space? You don't have millions of dollars. The same applies as the reason why nobody is going to Mars - there are insufficient numbers of people interested in it, and the people who are interested in it aren't interested enough to spend the sums necessary. It's a hard truth, but there it is.
Just so you know, if I had the chance and money to spare too, I would go too. If offered the chance to go for free, I would absolutely do it. However, I wouldn't do it imagining I was fulfilling some great destiny, I would go knowing full well that it is just fulfilling a selfish desire.
I am not asking for your faith. I am merely asking you to shut up and get out of the way in terms of trying to stop those who want to do this kind of thing with their own dime. If you think this is a foolish task, don't bother participating and I will leave you alone to do whatever it is that you want to do or think is a better use of your time and resources.
It should be clear from the context that I'm not the least concerned about people who want to go on their own dime. Just like any other hobby - model trains, stamp collecting, base jumping, you are free to do so on your own dime and even engage in calculated risks,
There is a problem though, with imagining that taking risks makes you a hero. It doesn't. Sacrificing your life for a hobby doesn't ennoble that hobby, stop pretending it does.
There is also a problem with groups that solicit money from others making promises that we know they cannot keep. Like Mars One. We all have a role in ensuring that those scams/ineptitudes are exposed before people get ripped off.
I'm going to quote myself so that there is no confusion because, to be honest, your remarks don't entirely align with the conversation, as if you've only read the first half of the first sentence of what I said.
Using somewhere 'off earth' as a life boat implies you have lift capacity and enduring off earth capacity to handle the whole population of earth - otherwise, to be brutally honest, you are planning for a scenario in which lots of people die, and promoting this plan above plans in which lots of people don't. Which leads to a few questions:
Who said anything about a life boat? I'm suggesting we don't stick to only having one one ship. The colonies won't be empty all of the time and just waiting for the chance to save the highest bidders in the event of a disaster. They'll have their own populations. Hopefully high enough to be able to sustain humanity if the population of Earth dies.
So (per above) how many deaths are acceptable to you in this scenario? 100 000? 4 million?
A billion?
The basic success measure of an emergency plan is to save as many lives as possible. How many lives will your off worlding plan actually save?
As for who will be 'allowed' to go live there - whoever volunteers. Life there won't be as easy as that on Earth, so I'm guessing the population will be mostly made up of those that are underpriviliged on Earth.
You have a flair for the under exaggerating! "Life there won't be as easy as that on Earth"?!? Your proposed colonists will never breath fresh air, never take a bath, never sit outside in the sun, never go to the theatre or a circus. They will be bombarded with damaging radiation, they will get cancers, for which they will receive sub standard treatment. they will most likely not be able to have children. They will live out their drastically shortened, neutered lives in lonely drudgery, in cramped quarters, gradually coming to understand that there really is nothing special about living in a plastic tank on a lifeless rock with no future. they will gaze hungrily on the earth but be unable to return, economically and medically, a short stint in zero or reduced gravity means the earth will kill you.
So, yeah, not easy, and not made easier by the dawning realisation that it's pointless.
BTW how does your plan(living in deep holes) deal with your complains about saving only some of humanity and being racist/culturalist about it?
Well, as I said before and you didn't dispute it, if subjected to a serious collision the earth may be unliveable for a few days but it will still be more habitable than anywhere else. So even doing nothing has at least the same rate of survival as an off world colony. So the obviously default plan would be, everyone goes into shelter, specially rated buildings, or underground in reconditioned mines or specially designed facilities. We would only need to be there for maybe a week - after that time, the outside temperature will return to something, if not normal, at least quite liveable. We then emerge from the shelters, replant crops in the still fertile soil, watered by the still functioning water cycle, breathing the still breathable atmosphere. So i would conservatively say that this plan would save billions of people. With enough effort, we could save everybody. Somewhat of a better result than the off world plan, which would (temporarily) save a few hundred, and then die out shortly after.
If I were to give my money to someone, it wouldn't be someone advocating that I sell my mainframe and replace it with an arduino board of unknown provenance but a pervasive smell of ozone and a promise that one day it will run mainframe systems based on some vague plan involving a coat hanger.
You see mainframes have built in redundancy. They have processing power. That's kind of important if you need to support many systems. It's true that a site disaster taking down the UPS will take the mainframe offline. But such site disasters are rare, whereas device failures, software failures and other small system problems are very common. The earth is a mainframe. Venus cloud cities, submarines on Europa and caves on Mars are like dodgy NT servers , unpatched, on unsupported hardware with a single hard drive on the point of failure. Just the smallest thing and they're gone. They support only a fraction of the power of the mainframe and thus, the notion that they'll serve as a mainframe replacement someday is frankly ridiculous.
In other words, your argument is ridiculous, it sounds ridiculous, it would be ridiculous, it would be remembered in perpetuity as ridiculous. You might have faith that the future of humanity depends on having a base on Mars. We don't share your faith. Come up with an objective, non faith based reason to do it, and we may listen.
Using somewhere 'off earth' as a life boat implies you have lift capacity and enduring off earth capacity to handle the whole population of earth - otherwise, to be brutally honest, you are planning for a scenario in which lots of people die, and promoting this plan above plans in which lots of people don't. Which leads to a few questions:
1. Where is this 'off earth' place that will support the earths population indefinitely whilst the earth recovers from this catastrophe?
2. In the absence of such a place, which races of people will be preferenced? Which cultural memories will be preserved, and which forgotten?
It just increases the chance that at least some humans will survive in case something takes out Earth.
How many, precisely?
And what is this thing you perceive will take out the earth yet not threaten other places in the inner solar system? There has only been one occasion when something of that severity happened, and that was when a collision caused the creation of the moon. That was so long ago there was no atmosphere anyway. Post that time there have been disasters, but as I noted previously, throughout those disasters the earth remained more habitable than anywhere else in the Solar System.
Which suggests that in the event of a disaster, we should preference doing nothing over leaving. And that is not taking into accoutn obviosu survival strategies, like digging deep holes into the crust, and living there temporarily.
Err. No. If we are responsible for the extinction of other species, it's time for us to stop doing that. Escapism isn't the way to tackle life's problems, and we won't escape our propensity for stupidity by shifting locations.
And if external events are of concern to you, note that even at the height of those events, the Earth was more habitable than anywhere else. Even as the asteroids rained down, even as dust plumed into the stratosphere and temperatures first rose, then plunged, the earth remain more habitable than any place that is "not-earth". If you are concerned for the survival of the species, you should be urging us to stay.
I'm not saying "no deity can exist". What I'm saying is that since there's NO proof of one, no "rational framework" that verifies the truth of the existence of any deity, we shouldn't consider their existence in the first place.
But not considering their existence (if that were possible) would leave us in the 'unknown' state, not the 'does not exist' state. And it is not possible to avoid considering the existence of a deity, here we are doing it right now.
A bantu tribesman, having never seen nor heard of a tv, is merely ignorant of the existence of TVs. This we would classify as a state of ignorance. If the idea of a TV is proposed to him, he may reject such an outlandish notion. He thus enters a second state. He has formed an opinion not on the basis of empirical evidence, but on the basis of his experience and worldview, i.e. he believes that TVs do not exist.
The first state is equivalent to agnosticism (i.e no knowledge). The second, in which an assertion (x does not exist) is accepted as true without the benefit of empirical evidence, is equivalent to atheism.
I like to see both as special cases of "ridiculous claims".
Well, you are entitled to your beliefs, just be aware that others don't believe the same things you do.
Whether Russell likes it or not, the statement there is no orbiting teapot is a statement of belief, since it is made absent evidence. A lack of belief in the teapot can co-exist comfortably with the universally held belief that there is no teapot. This uncomfortable fact is merely disguised by the fact that it is a shared belief - in other words, it's a strawman.
Since it's almost impossible to have evidence for the non-existence of something which, by definition, doesn't have much "proof" for its existence anyway, do we seriously consider all such claims?
I'm not sure that I understand your meaning.
You would be aware that epistemologically, there are many frameworks that we use to verify the truth of some statement. We trust the things said by others that we trust. If we do not like someone, we distrust what they say, sometimes irrationally. We sometimes verify what is said against a trusted source (e.g. personal observation, a trusted scientist or scientific method). Sometimes we don't.
Sometimes we recognise we can't - I can't for instance, verify the core sample results which lead to IPCC conclusions about climate sensitivity but I trust the process whereby the results were achieved, and distrust the conclusions made by contrarians because their reasoning is befouled by logical inconsistencies. I haven't made personal, repeatable observations, but does that say that (for me) the IPCC is wrong? That is ridiculous.
Similarly, the theoretical deity exists, or does not exist irrespective of whether we believe in it or not. Thus - worry less about the rationality of reaching one conclusion (a deity exists) and consider the rationality of reaching another (no deity can exist), using the third conclusion (I don't know) as your guide.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Straw man again, I never said that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere.
I see. It is a bit of a struggle to sort the things you say/imply from the things you actually think, but I hope we are getting close now. Would the following being an accurate reflection of what you think:
You think that atmospheric temperatures are sensitive to CO2 levels (per Arrhenius and others). You think this sensitivity is less than what is commonly thought (3 degrees for a doubling of CO2). You can't state the actual (revised) figure for sensitivity that you would like us to accept. You can't say why we should accept this (unknown) value, you can't demonstrate a flaw in the actual methodology used to calculate sensitivity but instead rely on hand waving and a flawed analysis of the current situation.
In conclusion, you think we should believe that climate sensitivity is unknown but definitely less than what science says, for reasons unknown, based on unexplainable research. mmkay.
Measurements suggest that there is a huge and growing amount of carbon in our atmosphere. And yet we haven't seen the warming suggested by the sensitivity in previous models.
So you are of the view that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere instantly reaches it's full potential as a greenhouse gas and the re is no lead time (as indicated by previous observations and basic thermodynamics)? Any other laws of thermodynamics that need to be dismissed while we are on the job?
So a natural conclusion is that those models were wrong.
Which models?
Other ideas being put out are that possibly volcanoes are masking the effects, or the warmth is settling deep into the ocean.
Are volcanos masking the effects? show working
Has the warmth settled deep into the ocean? show working
Regardless, it shouldn't be controversial to note that the atmospheric predictions have been wrong.
Allege what you like. Describe whatever marvellous fantasy comes to mind. If you want your theory to be treated with anything other than derision you can describe a theoretical foundation for your hypothesis and then prove it using verifiable observations. Otherwise: derision.
I don't need to model it -- I'm just looking at the actual earth.
So: a new foundational understand of climatology (and thermodynamics) doesn't require science and observation and peer reviewed material. It requires "earth looking". Is "earth looking" like yogic flying by any chance?
The gloom and doom scenarios from 15 and 20 years ago haven't happened.
Well, for a serious reply, where does everyone in the US currently live?
Hard to say precisely - I've never been there. But at a guess I would say that they mostly live in apartments, semi-detached and full detached dwellings service by sewage, water, electricity, gas, road and rail infrastructure, farms, industry, commercial centres all with a established worth in the trillions of dollars.
Intuitively then, throwing this infrastructure away would be somewhat more expensive than replacing inefficient fossil fueled power plants with more efficient plants (e.g. nuclear) over a period of forty years - given that the latter will be EOL then anyway.
Somehow, the US manages a very high rate of movement and yet not have everyone live out of their cars.
That movement is financed by selling the homes they are moving out of. 20% of US infrastructure is not abandoned annually and then every homeowner completely refinancing on average every 5 years. This would leave a 50 year old with an average of 4 mortgages worth of debt. Are you sure that's a good plan?
You dismiss the remarks made by "non-scientists" yet want us to believe you when you say you have a theory as to the mysterious mechanisms whereby anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does.
I never said that, you just made that up. You are guilty of the straw man fallacy, and of (in general) being ridiculous.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Consider me skeptical.
* Maybe climate sensitivity to carbon isn't subject to the overwhelming, catastrophic feedback effects that have been predicted by doomsayers
Is the climate subject to positive feedbacks? If so, what is the scale of these feedbacks, precisely? Justify your results with working and reference your observations.
Maybe (shock and horror) a warming earth isn't such a bad thing.
Is a warming earth on the scale described by the IPCC a good thing or bad thing? Show us the model used, reference the results and model code, precise estimates of emigration, economic impacts and the cost of adaption (infrastructure opportunity cost, etc.) . Refere the economics paper in which your theories are published.
I have never, ever seen a coherent explanation of why an ice age would be preferable to a warm earth. If carbon counteracts an ice age, how is that not a Good Thing?
Of course, Russell's argument was criticised at the time he made it, and criticised still today - said criticisms being, in part:
1. An orbiting teapot is not analogous to a diety
2. Whether Russell likes it or not, the statement there is no orbiting teapot is a statement of belief, since it is made absent evidence. A lack of belief in the teapot can co-exist comfortably with the universally held belief that there is no teapot. This uncomfortable fact is merely disguised by the fact that it is a shared belief - in other words, it's a strawman.
The idea that God does not exist isn't a belief. It's a lack of belief.
Unless you can provide empirical proof that there is no God, it's a belief. There is nothing magical about it.
This Muslim is not alone in considering the current plans for suicide missions to be ethically problematic.
And that is why religion should be banned. Now.
By all means, attempt to ban anyone who doesn't agree with your views on Mars settlement.
And if you honestly equate relocating to a harsh environment as suicide, you are an idiot should be banned too.
By all means, attempt to ban me (from what, might I ask, out of curiousity?) . And good luck with that. But back to the real world - unless you are actually able to describe why we should let a corporation (e.g. Mars One) get away with sending people to their deaths, based on lies, I'll continue to voice my concern and expose those lies: like this one:
In a 1000 years, everyone on Earth will still remember who the first humans on Mars were.
or this one:
Mars One designed a mission using only existing technology. In the coming years, a demonstration mission, communication satellites, two rovers and several cargo missions will be sent to Mars
Its no more suicide than it is to settle in another country with no intent to return, and live the rest of your life there.
There is a distinction between deliberately and inevitably shortening your life by some action (e.g. by going to Mars), and choosing to live your life in another country. This is about the choosing to die, not about hazard, and not about location. Mars residents can expect to live up to a year, maybe less, maybe slightly more. They have no chance of living a full life.
This Muslim is not alone in considering the current plans for suicide missions to be ethically problematic. Many of the people signing up for the Mars One expedition (and similiar) have unrealistic expectations - that it is the start of permanent settlement, that a Mars colony can thrive, that humanity has some mysterious 'destiny' to move beyond Earth, that they will be remembered fondly by future generations. None of these things are likely or even plausible. If they knew the truth, would they be signing up? What is Mars One, doing, peddling lies that will lead to the deaths of the unlucky few who are chosen?
Because fanatics like you are dangerous, as are fanatics in any religion. When a person becomes convinced that the fate of the world and all of humanity hangs on the victory of their cause (whether their cause is Christianity, Islam, Global Warming, etc.), they can become gravely irrational and a danger to their fellow man.
If your delusions are uninteresting, then it stands to reason that any delusions you spout to explain your delusions will be similiarly uninteresting. Is it turtles all the way down?
Just look at all of the threads above with environmentalists spewing incredible personal *HATRED* for GW skeptics. Not disagreement, not criticism---but *fanatical hatred*.
Once again, are your delusions supposed to be of interest to us?
Slashdot Mirror
Small boats regularly depart illegally from Indonesian beaches,
It 's not illegal to leave Indonesia by boat.
heading for other countries and when told about it, the Indonesians show zero interest in arresting and charging the crews and passengers or even taking them back.
People travel by boat between countries all the time. In my country (also Australia) 30,541 boats arrived here in the 2011/2012 FY. That's just the commercial vessels, not including pleasure craft, navy visits etc.
Of course the Indonesians aren't interested in stopping something that is not illegal or immoral, or damaging to their economy, or ours.
ind a definition of extreme which the AGW people are happy to stick to for 60 years.
You mean 'scientists'. By AGW people, you mean 'scientists'. And there is no need for us to "find a definition". They've published their findings, along with a glossary to capture the menaing of the word 'extreme'.
Have you published your findings?
Besides if air temps haven't been going up as fast as they were scenario'd as going up, what's causing the "freak" weather?
Are air temperatures going up, or down?
Interesting.
Not really. If it was men, you'd say they were assholes too each other.
No we wouldn't. 'Bitch' has exactly the same connotation for either gender, it is just used as an insult.
Stop trying to read more into it than there is asshole.
Interesting. According to your own nomenclature you assume I'm male. And no need for me to 'read anything into it', here is the relevant section from the article:
According to Horvath: “I met her and almost immediately the conversation that I thought was supposed to be causal turned into something very inappropriate. She began telling me about how she informs her husband’s decision-making at GitHub, how I better not leave GitHub and write something bad about them, and how she had been told by her husband that she should intervene with my relationship to be sure I was ‘made very happy’ so that I wouldn’t quit and say something nasty about her husband’s company because ‘he had worked so hard.’”
In short, the problem was that this structure in which someone outside of scrutiny employs devious means to affect the structure and direction of the company makes it unworkable for employers - they are not accountable to this person, yet they are answerable to her. To carry on in this manner is to court disaster.
Horvath called the situation, aptly, “bananas.”
. I wouldn't work there if I was pulled aside for that sort of conversation (apparently approved in secret by one the founders) and I would think it was bananas as well.
There are different terms used for people with differences ... and guess what no how much you like it, men and women are different from each other ... I know this because I Can't pass a bowling ball through my penis, yet my wife can spit out a baby (with a lot of effort!).
What an impressively meaningless anecdote. Grow up.
Pull your head out of your ass and stop acting like we're all exactly the same and you'll find yourself a lot less concerned with being politically correct to the point of uselessness.
So you feel threatened by 'political correctness' - get over it. You lost that argument. Do you want to know why you lost? You weren't smart enough to listen to what the other side was saying, thus carried on as if nothing could possibly change, and then it did. Now you are bitching about it.
Get over it, bitch.
So it's just a tale of one woman being bitchy to another.
Interesting choice of words in the circumstances.
Those aren't the terrorists you're looking for
Thankfully the Attorney General only has the power to enforce laws, not to write laws (that's the job of the elected senators and ministers).
Yes. How fortunate that Senator George Brandis isn't you know, a member of the Senate.
But seriously, of all the inner circle of petrified, ideological nincompoops in the new government this guy is up with the best of them. He has no idea about law, how law should be made or enforced, the intent of law and the notion of correct legal practice and judicial ruling. Just the person you want, you know, for the attorney general.
He was an Q & A the other night, arguing for the removal of the racial villification clauses form the Racial Discrimination acts. Why? Because one of his cronies had been found guilty under this section. He said it out loud. Other more apparently learned members of the panel schooled him on the notion of "the rule of law".
No, George. It's not the role of the law to protect your racist buddies when they make false claims against named persons and then publish them, explcitly alleging that their alleged behaviour is typical of their race (or worse, racial mixture)
You claim that you don't care about people doing stuff like BASE jumping, mountain climbing up Mt. Everest, or doing other potentially life threatening things, yet you complain about people going into space on their own dime.... with or without voluntary sponsorships from others. Yet here you go and say precisely the opposite.
Don't manufacture a controversy that doesn't exist.
As for Mars One, I think those guys are full of it and don't know what they are doing, and legitimate engineers and even fans are trying to offer help yet it is being rejected in favor of fluff and pomp. That is why Mars One is going to fail, not because they are trying to attempt something foolish. I'll also agree that there will be scam artists and people with less than honorable intentions who are trying to milk those with a dream of someday working and living in space, some of whom have some serious money to offer as well.
It seems that we mostly agree.
Again, I am not asking you for anything explicitly other than to suggest if you want to help, work with me and others who want to go into space. If you think it is stupid, move along so you don't get in my way. And please, give me the permission and opportunity to do this kind of stuff instead of holding a gun to my head and telling me I can't go into space. It doesn't matter if you do it personally or have laws enacted and a government thug does that instead... it is the same thing in the end.
I'm not holding a gun to you head. Want to know why you aren't going into space? You don't have millions of dollars. The same applies as the reason why nobody is going to Mars - there are insufficient numbers of people interested in it, and the people who are interested in it aren't interested enough to spend the sums necessary. It's a hard truth, but there it is.
Just so you know, if I had the chance and money to spare too, I would go too. If offered the chance to go for free, I would absolutely do it. However, I wouldn't do it imagining I was fulfilling some great destiny, I would go knowing full well that it is just fulfilling a selfish desire.
I am not asking for your faith. I am merely asking you to shut up and get out of the way in terms of trying to stop those who want to do this kind of thing with their own dime. If you think this is a foolish task, don't bother participating and I will leave you alone to do whatever it is that you want to do or think is a better use of your time and resources.
It should be clear from the context that I'm not the least concerned about people who want to go on their own dime. Just like any other hobby - model trains, stamp collecting, base jumping, you are free to do so on your own dime and even engage in calculated risks,
There is a problem though, with imagining that taking risks makes you a hero. It doesn't. Sacrificing your life for a hobby doesn't ennoble that hobby, stop pretending it does.
There is also a problem with groups that solicit money from others making promises that we know they cannot keep. Like Mars One. We all have a role in ensuring that those scams/ineptitudes are exposed before people get ripped off.
Using somewhere 'off earth' as a life boat implies you have lift capacity and enduring off earth capacity to handle the whole population of earth - otherwise, to be brutally honest, you are planning for a scenario in which lots of people die, and promoting this plan above plans in which lots of people don't. Which leads to a few questions:
Who said anything about a life boat? I'm suggesting we don't stick to only having one one ship. The colonies won't be empty all of the time and just waiting for the chance to save the highest bidders in the event of a disaster. They'll have their own populations. Hopefully high enough to be able to sustain humanity if the population of Earth dies.
So (per above) how many deaths are acceptable to you in this scenario? 100 000? 4 million?
A billion?
The basic success measure of an emergency plan is to save as many lives as possible. How many lives will your off worlding plan actually save?
As for who will be 'allowed' to go live there - whoever volunteers. Life there won't be as easy as that on Earth, so I'm guessing the population will be mostly made up of those that are underpriviliged on Earth.
You have a flair for the under exaggerating! "Life there won't be as easy as that on Earth"?!? Your proposed colonists will never breath fresh air, never take a bath, never sit outside in the sun, never go to the theatre or a circus. They will be bombarded with damaging radiation, they will get cancers, for which they will receive sub standard treatment. they will most likely not be able to have children. They will live out their drastically shortened, neutered lives in lonely drudgery, in cramped quarters, gradually coming to understand that there really is nothing special about living in a plastic tank on a lifeless rock with no future. they will gaze hungrily on the earth but be unable to return, economically and medically, a short stint in zero or reduced gravity means the earth will kill you.
So, yeah, not easy, and not made easier by the dawning realisation that it's pointless.
BTW how does your plan(living in deep holes) deal with your complains about saving only some of humanity and being racist/culturalist about it?
Well, as I said before and you didn't dispute it, if subjected to a serious collision the earth may be unliveable for a few days but it will still be more habitable than anywhere else. So even doing nothing has at least the same rate of survival as an off world colony. So the obviously default plan would be, everyone goes into shelter, specially rated buildings, or underground in reconditioned mines or specially designed facilities. We would only need to be there for maybe a week - after that time, the outside temperature will return to something, if not normal, at least quite liveable. We then emerge from the shelters, replant crops in the still fertile soil, watered by the still functioning water cycle, breathing the still breathable atmosphere. So i would conservatively say that this plan would save billions of people. With enough effort, we could save everybody. Somewhat of a better result than the off world plan, which would (temporarily) save a few hundred, and then die out shortly after.
You see mainframes have built in redundancy. They have processing power. That's kind of important if you need to support many systems. It's true that a site disaster taking down the UPS will take the mainframe offline. But such site disasters are rare, whereas device failures, software failures and other small system problems are very common. The earth is a mainframe. Venus cloud cities, submarines on Europa and caves on Mars are like dodgy NT servers , unpatched, on unsupported hardware with a single hard drive on the point of failure. Just the smallest thing and they're gone. They support only a fraction of the power of the mainframe and thus, the notion that they'll serve as a mainframe replacement someday is frankly ridiculous.
Because it's there
The same argument can be made for an Escalator to Nowhere, a 50 ft magnifying glass or a Popsicle Stick Skyscraper We should build them "because we can".
In other words, your argument is ridiculous, it sounds ridiculous, it would be ridiculous, it would be remembered in perpetuity as ridiculous. You might have faith that the future of humanity depends on having a base on Mars. We don't share your faith. Come up with an objective, non faith based reason to do it, and we may listen.
Settling space doesn't imply abandoning Earth.
Using somewhere 'off earth' as a life boat implies you have lift capacity and enduring off earth capacity to handle the whole population of earth - otherwise, to be brutally honest, you are planning for a scenario in which lots of people die, and promoting this plan above plans in which lots of people don't. Which leads to a few questions:
1. Where is this 'off earth' place that will support the earths population indefinitely whilst the earth recovers from this catastrophe?
2. In the absence of such a place, which races of people will be preferenced? Which cultural memories will be preserved, and which forgotten?
It just increases the chance that at least some humans will survive in case something takes out Earth.
How many, precisely?
And what is this thing you perceive will take out the earth yet not threaten other places in the inner solar system? There has only been one occasion when something of that severity happened, and that was when a collision caused the creation of the moon. That was so long ago there was no atmosphere anyway. Post that time there have been disasters, but as I noted previously, throughout those disasters the earth remained more habitable than anywhere else in the Solar System.
Which suggests that in the event of a disaster, we should preference doing nothing over leaving. And that is not taking into accoutn obviosu survival strategies, like digging deep holes into the crust, and living there temporarily.
Tell me (precisely) where this logic is wrong.
The same argument can be used for sending cows into space, or muffins, or lighthouses. Why would you send a lighthouse into space? Because it's there.
And if external events are of concern to you, note that even at the height of those events, the Earth was more habitable than anywhere else. Even as the asteroids rained down, even as dust plumed into the stratosphere and temperatures first rose, then plunged, the earth remain more habitable than any place that is "not-earth". If you are concerned for the survival of the species, you should be urging us to stay.
I'm not saying "no deity can exist". What I'm saying is that since there's NO proof of one, no "rational framework" that verifies the truth of the existence of any deity, we shouldn't consider their existence in the first place.
But not considering their existence (if that were possible) would leave us in the 'unknown' state, not the 'does not exist' state. And it is not possible to avoid considering the existence of a deity, here we are doing it right now.
A bantu tribesman, having never seen nor heard of a tv, is merely ignorant of the existence of TVs. This we would classify as a state of ignorance. If the idea of a TV is proposed to him, he may reject such an outlandish notion. He thus enters a second state. He has formed an opinion not on the basis of empirical evidence, but on the basis of his experience and worldview, i.e. he believes that TVs do not exist.
The first state is equivalent to agnosticism (i.e no knowledge). The second, in which an assertion (x does not exist) is accepted as true without the benefit of empirical evidence, is equivalent to atheism.
An orbiting teapot is not analogous to a diety.
I like to see both as special cases of "ridiculous claims".
Well, you are entitled to your beliefs, just be aware that others don't believe the same things you do.
Whether Russell likes it or not, the statement there is no orbiting teapot is a statement of belief, since it is made absent evidence. A lack of belief in the teapot can co-exist comfortably with the universally held belief that there is no teapot. This uncomfortable fact is merely disguised by the fact that it is a shared belief - in other words, it's a strawman.
Since it's almost impossible to have evidence for the non-existence of something which, by definition, doesn't have much "proof" for its existence anyway, do we seriously consider all such claims?
I'm not sure that I understand your meaning.
You would be aware that epistemologically, there are many frameworks that we use to verify the truth of some statement. We trust the things said by others that we trust. If we do not like someone, we distrust what they say, sometimes irrationally. We sometimes verify what is said against a trusted source (e.g. personal observation, a trusted scientist or scientific method). Sometimes we don't.
Sometimes we recognise we can't - I can't for instance, verify the core sample results which lead to IPCC conclusions about climate sensitivity but I trust the process whereby the results were achieved, and distrust the conclusions made by contrarians because their reasoning is befouled by logical inconsistencies. I haven't made personal, repeatable observations, but does that say that (for me) the IPCC is wrong? That is ridiculous.
Similarly, the theoretical deity exists, or does not exist irrespective of whether we believe in it or not. Thus - worry less about the rationality of reaching one conclusion (a deity exists) and consider the rationality of reaching another (no deity can exist), using the third conclusion (I don't know) as your guide.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Straw man again, I never said that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere.
I see. It is a bit of a struggle to sort the things you say/imply from the things you actually think, but I hope we are getting close now. Would the following being an accurate reflection of what you think: You think that atmospheric temperatures are sensitive to CO2 levels (per Arrhenius and others). You think this sensitivity is less than what is commonly thought (3 degrees for a doubling of CO2). You can't state the actual (revised) figure for sensitivity that you would like us to accept. You can't say why we should accept this (unknown) value, you can't demonstrate a flaw in the actual methodology used to calculate sensitivity but instead rely on hand waving and a flawed analysis of the current situation.
In conclusion, you think we should believe that climate sensitivity is unknown but definitely less than what science says, for reasons unknown, based on unexplainable research. mmkay.
Measurements suggest that there is a huge and growing amount of carbon in our atmosphere. And yet we haven't seen the warming suggested by the sensitivity in previous models.
So you are of the view that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere instantly reaches it's full potential as a greenhouse gas and the re is no lead time (as indicated by previous observations and basic thermodynamics)? Any other laws of thermodynamics that need to be dismissed while we are on the job?
So a natural conclusion is that those models were wrong.
Which models?
Other ideas being put out are that possibly volcanoes are masking the effects, or the warmth is settling deep into the ocean.
Are volcanos masking the effects? show working
Has the warmth settled deep into the ocean? show working
Regardless, it shouldn't be controversial to note that the atmospheric predictions have been wrong.
Allege what you like. Describe whatever marvellous fantasy comes to mind. If you want your theory to be treated with anything other than derision you can describe a theoretical foundation for your hypothesis and then prove it using verifiable observations. Otherwise: derision.
I don't need to model it -- I'm just looking at the actual earth.
So: a new foundational understand of climatology (and thermodynamics) doesn't require science and observation and peer reviewed material. It requires "earth looking". Is "earth looking" like yogic flying by any chance?
The gloom and doom scenarios from 15 and 20 years ago haven't happened.
What scenarios?
Well, for a serious reply, where does everyone in the US currently live?
Hard to say precisely - I've never been there. But at a guess I would say that they mostly live in apartments, semi-detached and full detached dwellings service by sewage, water, electricity, gas, road and rail infrastructure, farms, industry, commercial centres all with a established worth in the trillions of dollars.
Intuitively then, throwing this infrastructure away would be somewhat more expensive than replacing inefficient fossil fueled power plants with more efficient plants (e.g. nuclear) over a period of forty years - given that the latter will be EOL then anyway.
Somehow, the US manages a very high rate of movement and yet not have everyone live out of their cars.
That movement is financed by selling the homes they are moving out of. 20% of US infrastructure is not abandoned annually and then every homeowner completely refinancing on average every 5 years. This would leave a 50 year old with an average of 4 mortgages worth of debt. Are you sure that's a good plan?
You dismiss the remarks made by "non-scientists" yet want us to believe you when you say you have a theory as to the mysterious mechanisms whereby anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does.
I never said that, you just made that up. You are guilty of the straw man fallacy, and of (in general) being ridiculous.
You don't have a theory? So you want us to believe that anthropogenic emissions don't warm the atmosphere, but "naturally occurring" CO2 does, but you yourself cannot think of a reason why on earth this would be true?
Consider me skeptical.
* Maybe climate sensitivity to carbon isn't subject to the overwhelming, catastrophic feedback effects that have been predicted by doomsayers
Is the climate subject to positive feedbacks? If so, what is the scale of these feedbacks, precisely? Justify your results with working and reference your observations.
Maybe (shock and horror) a warming earth isn't such a bad thing.
Is a warming earth on the scale described by the IPCC a good thing or bad thing? Show us the model used, reference the results and model code, precise estimates of emigration, economic impacts and the cost of adaption (infrastructure opportunity cost, etc.) . Refere the economics paper in which your theories are published.
I have never, ever seen a coherent explanation of why an ice age would be preferable to a warm earth. If carbon counteracts an ice age, how is that not a Good Thing?
Why would I care about strawmen?
1. An orbiting teapot is not analogous to a diety
2. Whether Russell likes it or not, the statement there is no orbiting teapot is a statement of belief, since it is made absent evidence. A lack of belief in the teapot can co-exist comfortably with the universally held belief that there is no teapot. This uncomfortable fact is merely disguised by the fact that it is a shared belief - in other words, it's a strawman.
The idea that God does not exist isn't a belief. It's a lack of belief.
Unless you can provide empirical proof that there is no God, it's a belief. There is nothing magical about it.
This Muslim is not alone in considering the current plans for suicide missions to be ethically problematic.
And that is why religion should be banned. Now.
By all means, attempt to ban anyone who doesn't agree with your views on Mars settlement.
And if you honestly equate relocating to a harsh environment as suicide, you are an idiot should be banned too.
By all means, attempt to ban me (from what, might I ask, out of curiousity?) . And good luck with that. But back to the real world - unless you are actually able to describe why we should let a corporation (e.g. Mars One) get away with sending people to their deaths, based on lies, I'll continue to voice my concern and expose those lies: like this one: In a 1000 years, everyone on Earth will still remember who the first humans on Mars were.
or this one: Mars One designed a mission using only existing technology. In the coming years, a demonstration mission, communication satellites, two rovers and several cargo missions will be sent to Mars
Its no more suicide than it is to settle in another country with no intent to return, and live the rest of your life there.
There is a distinction between deliberately and inevitably shortening your life by some action (e.g. by going to Mars), and choosing to live your life in another country. This is about the choosing to die, not about hazard, and not about location. Mars residents can expect to live up to a year, maybe less, maybe slightly more. They have no chance of living a full life.
This Muslim is not alone in considering the current plans for suicide missions to be ethically problematic. Many of the people signing up for the Mars One expedition (and similiar) have unrealistic expectations - that it is the start of permanent settlement, that a Mars colony can thrive, that humanity has some mysterious 'destiny' to move beyond Earth, that they will be remembered fondly by future generations. None of these things are likely or even plausible. If they knew the truth, would they be signing up? What is Mars One, doing, peddling lies that will lead to the deaths of the unlucky few who are chosen?
Maybe it's that DNA that caused you to miss the sarcasm
Because fanatics like you are dangerous, as are fanatics in any religion. When a person becomes convinced that the fate of the world and all of humanity hangs on the victory of their cause (whether their cause is Christianity, Islam, Global Warming, etc.), they can become gravely irrational and a danger to their fellow man.
If your delusions are uninteresting, then it stands to reason that any delusions you spout to explain your delusions will be similiarly uninteresting. Is it turtles all the way down?
Just look at all of the threads above with environmentalists spewing incredible personal *HATRED* for GW skeptics. Not disagreement, not criticism---but *fanatical hatred*.
Once again, are your delusions supposed to be of interest to us?
Why?
So your basic plan is for everybody to live in their cars?