A race when an opponent has reached the finish line in friggin 1969?
A fairly arbitrarily selected finish line - as opposed to 'put a probe on the moon', 'put a human in orbit', 'put a craft into interstellar space' or 'achieve useful velocities to enable interplanetary travel', 'send a spacecraft to the moons of Saturn and return it safely to earth' - and so on. Kennedy select one from a list and went for it. Arguably the other options would have served more purpose but didn't involve imagery of brave Americans breaching a new frontier, and thus did not suit the PR driver.
Well, apparently a man on the moon is the second technological feat that is impossible today but achievable in the 70.
Of course it is possible. The difficulty is that, absent fear of the communists or imperialists (depending on which team you go for) there is just no reason to do it.
That is why the Apollo program was shut down of course, due to a gradual realisation that travelling to the Moon served no useful purpose. People love to talk about why it was started, forgetting that the reasons why it was not continued are far more relevant.
How does this not contradict your central premise (Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws)?
[null response]
You don't have an answer? You accept that that your argument As to legislation, the reality is that the highly restrictive climate change oriented legislation is deeply unpopular both nationally and internationally. contradicts your initial premise Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws?
What is more, you seem to think that if you just get the US or a couple other countries to sign on its mission accomplished.
Please cite me expressing this point of view or indeed showing any interest at all in what the US is doing.
[null response]
You don't have a response - we'll take it as read then, that this is yet another ill conceived and baseless rant on your part.
Satire is great. Stephen Colbert is great. But it blunts any outrage I might have had over the state-funded science museum not showing the film.
I'm struggling to see why. Satire is not offensive, or least, not nearly as offensive as the kind of untruths we hear from politicians day in and day out. It is a legitimate way to convey a message that sticks in the mind. Should public institutions be forced to convey important public announcements without the aid of any rhetorical device? What of loudspeakers? Some people find them "offensive".
It would be unfortunate indeed if we accepted the right of the anti-science brigade to engage in rhetoric, up to and including very offensive remarks (threats of physical and sexual violence, allegations of pedophillia lagainst leading climate scientists and the like) and denied the right of science to engage in satire to convey facts.
If your argument consistents of repeatedly screaming "give up! give up!" with no detail on what I ought to give up or what would compel me to give it up I'll make free to interpret your remarks in any way I choose.
As to legislation, the reality is that the highly restrictive climate change oriented legislation is deeply unpopular both nationally and internationally.
If that were true, I fail to see how it would affect legislation that is not highly restrictive. If anything, you are making an argument AGAINST Direct Action (which is purely regulation) and FOR an ETS (which is not). How does this not contradict your central premise (Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws)?
What is more, you seem to think that if you just get the US or a couple other countries to sign on its mission accomplished.
Please cite me expressing this point of view or indeed showing any interest at all in what the US is doing.
China and India won't sign on. The developing world has zero regard for your position.
My position being that Australia has not rejected the need for climate action
And then of course you lapse into a series of disconnected rants which have nothing to do with the point you are trying to make:
[snipped]
2. As to giving up, I didn't suggest you give up. I suggested that you stop doing stupid counter productive things that merely serve to irritate people and underscore your incompetence.
Let's consider you judgments in context.
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions. Denialists told us the earth wasn't warming
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions. Denialists told us the earth was warming, but it's the sun
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions. Denialists told us the earth was warming, it's not the sun and how dare you talk to us in those words! We are offended! Appease us!
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions. Denialists rang up the scientists making death threats and threats to rape theoir children if they didn't stop talking
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions. Economists told us that we can make the necessary cuts with minimal impact on our economy and be the better for it. Denialists told us it was a conspiracy involving time travelling clones of AL Gore - invisible clones of course.
Scientists told us the earth was warming due to anthropogenic emissions.Economists told us that we can make the necessary cuts with minimal impact on our economy and be the better for it. Denialists told us it was a conspiracy by governments to get more power and we shouldn't try to do anything because governments don't want to do anything
Talk about your cognitive dissonance. What a joke. It's a government conspiracy to control us using legislation, but we shouldn't tell our governments to legislate, because they don't want to do it!
You'll excuse me if I don't take your speculations about my intent, or your judgements about my intellect, or you conspicuously contradictory and uncited views on the feelings of the Australian public very seriously.
Didn't you just tell him not to call people names if you want to be treated with respect?
Well let me see. Here's what I said:
That's a little discourteous. My suggestion is that if you want yourself and your ideas to be treated with respect, that you likewise treat others with respect.
Yes. Yes I did.
I haven't seen the film, but it is entirely possible that it runs afoul of this same advice.
It seems unlikely that the film called someone a stupid f*ck based on zero evidence.
It seems more likely that the film makes reference to the stupid and dangerous legislation in force in North Carolina by suggesting that it is stupid and/or dangerous, which is simply an accurate annotation, something you yourself apparently do not dispute.
Hopefully you are smart enough to see the difference.
The existing infrastructure needs to be replaced - perhaps not straight away, but within 20 years. So the conversation is always about what we replace it with. We are also already paying a mitigation cost although this is at present minimal, ramping up to 20% for GDP by about 2060.
Infrastructure costs include the power stations themselves, but also the huge connecting infrastructure, powerlines and substations, easements for same to be maintained. The primayr cost factors for renwable verus non-renwable are:
C: Cost
M: Cost of mitigation
I: Infrastructure costs for powert distribution
G: Cost of generating Infrastructure
g: Ongoing costs (fuel, maintenance etc)
Suffix
r: renewable
nr: non renewable
Cnr = Mnr + Inr + Gnr + gnr
Cr = Mr + Ir + Gr + gr
Gr > Gnr (for the time being)
Mnr >> Mr
Inr > Ir
gnr > gr
In order for non - renewables to be cost competitive with renewables, Gr - Gnr would need ot be larger than (Mnr - Mr) + ( Inr - Ir ) + (gnr - gr) where M >> G.
1. Legislation that is not before parliament and looks unlikely to pass through the hostile senate should somehow be considered 'inevitable'. That is not how it works.
2. The huge, growing, and increasingly angry crowd of Australians loudly and insistently demanding action on climate change over and above the promised 5% target reduction by 2020 should 'give up' because a new government was elected with a 5% target, replacing the old government with a 5% target.
After being given repeated opportunities, you apparently can't explain why 'giving up' would the appropriate thing at this juncture.
I heard them. You (and the OP) obviously didn't. The OP said: Look at all the folks (& politicians) who were claiming that typhoon in the Philippines is proof of AGW.
Whereas the filipinos said was that climate change made typhoon Haiyan worse, and that climate change would continue to make such storms worse into the future.
These two statements are completely different. Typhon Haiyan is not proof of AGW. Tyndall, Fourier and Arrhenius finished 'proving' AGW 100 years ago. Typhoon Haiyan is a visceral reminder of the kinds of things that will happen as the troposphere and oceans warm.
That's a little discourteous. My suggestion is that if you want yourself and your ideas to be treated with respect, that you likewise treat others with respect.
a single museum is deciding not to show what would appear to be a political movie masquerading as a scientific documentary.
Calling stupid legislation stupid is merely accurate labelling. To withhold saying that someone's stupid ideas are stupid on the grounds that that person is a legislator is to engage in politicing.
Is this the same science museum that refused to show "The population Bomb: The Movie", "Ice Age: Year 2010" and all the other variations of were all going to be dead 30 years from now unless we are all forced to adopt whatever leftist ideology is popular at the time?
Why are you asking us? Surely if you want to understand the films content, you could look at TFA yourself, and study the history of the museum.
The environmentalists have taken a page from Harold Camping and all other doomsday cults. Make a prediction that mankind will all be dead, or facing an apocalyptic scenario 30 years from now, and when that 30 years have passed and nothing terrible has happened still insist you are still right and make another prediction for the apocalypse 30 years from now, but this time its real!
Your understanding of the predictions made by climate models is completely off the wall insane, and laughably wrong. You need to get a handle on the basic facts before presuming to criticise either the science of the actions of others in response to that science.
I found a few who said that the increasing severity of these sorts of storms in specific regions is linked to changing climate - but that is completely different statement and to collate the two as one would indeed be disingenuous. And nobody would want to be regarded as disingenuous.
I apologize for suggesting your head was not an appropriate implement for breaking rocks.
Not analogous. The most recent surveys indicate that 60% of Australians favour stronger action on climate change. A better analogy would be a giant rock rolling down a hill, crushing all before it.
Doctors have known for years that smoking causes lung cancer. When you were younger, you readily believed that smoking causes lung cancer, as does everyone you know. But then because of some idiot friends, and because you yourself are an idiot, you took up smoking. Suddenly, you no longer think that smoking cause lung cancer.
You say you want the medical community to convince you, (not prove but convince) that you, personally, can contract lung cancer by smoking, before you will stop smoking.
When you present this argument to your doctor, he points out a few things:
(a) It's his job to present the facts, it's not his business to convince you. You are responsible for your destructive actions, past, present and future, not the doctor.
(b) If you want to disprove the link between smoking and lung cancer, that's YOUR JOB. Nobody owes you a personal proof, and nobody is going to give you one.
(c) You imagine your fondness for smoking means that you should somehow be compensated for having to give it up - this is delusional. Instead, if someone else contracts cancer because of your second hand smoke, you, yourself, are liable.
(d) The fact that you previously accepted that smoking causes cancer is an indictment against you - you only stopped accepting it because it was difficult for you personally. This has no impact on the concrete pillar of objective facts. Not even a scratch.
In response, you walk out in a huff, vowing never to see a doctor again, after all, the thigns they say are offensive and impede your liberties. Then you die a long slow death - of lung cancer.
No they are not. The previous government was largely dysfunctional. The new government made much noise before the election about removing the ETS in place in Australia because it was slewed toward making big emitters pay, who coincidentally happen to be the primary financiers of the conservative party. Now they feel committed to removing the ETS, but intend to replace it with a system of regulation which will achieve the same ends, but cost considerably more, on the basis that to do otherwise would hurt their financiers, and thus them.
As it turns out they are quite incompetent and seem unable to progress their agenda at all - in this case, due to the widespread unpopularity of their scheme there's every chance they will never get the legislation through - and if they do, it will damage them significantly, since the voices demanding stronger action on climate in Australia are far stronger than the voices saying nothing should be done.
Climate models are currently, at best, when treated as an ensemble (if you buy that as legitimate)
Is there a methodological reason to NOT treat the ensemble as legitimate? Please describe this reasoning in detail.
skirting along the p 0.05 level of significance in the validation period.
Define precisely what you mean by "skirting along". How far below 0.05 are the models results, exactly?
Pointing this out is considered trolling -- it probably offends some religious sensibilities.
I suspect you are misinterpreting the responses. Mostly when we dig down on these sorts of remarks, high level, without data or empirical basis, no repeatable observations, we find them to be the work of some deceptive, brainless, mouth breathing denialist. You might be an ok chap, but I can't really make a conclusion until I've seen the data.
It's a matter of probability. Perhaps someone who sounds like a denialist is, in spite of the evidence, a rational, coherent person who is nevertheless ignorant of the science or misled by paid shills (like Anthony Watts who is paid a salary by the Heartland Institute to LIE about climate science, or Judith Curry, who deliberately misleads by wrapping genuine science in a penumbra of sneering psuedo-scepticism).
Generally the best measure is as follows:
1. The person refuses to provide specifics but only speaks in generalities - likely a committed denialist
2. The person provides specific (albeit incorrect) facts. ignorant or misled by liars
Like many people I have a lot of sympathy for the genuinely misled and will try to help them if I can. The deliberate lies and deception on the part of the denier hierarchy makes my blood boil.
Tightening the threshold as the article suggests would mean the model results are not "significant" (i.e., not reasonably distinguishable from natural variation -
Actually the article makes no mention of anything related to climate science. It is mainly focussed on instances where results are found not to be reproducible and using a frequentist methodology. Climate models are very reproducible and don't use a frequentist method - they make predictions, not observation.
n -- note that I am not a "denier" and that I do accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas etc. etc.; I am however hugely skeptical of most climate and environmental science that I have investigated).
And yet you refer to these supposed problems in the climate science in generalities. Why is that?
The spying in question was allowing the US to use Australian embassies as spy-bases. Snowden had access to the relevant documents solely because the NSA did some heavy lifting in this particular operation.
Nothing in the article suggests that this is the case, and in numerous media reports and details of the leak itself say otherwise. Why would the US use the Australian embassy? Why wouldn't they use their own? Why would they bother surveiling the Indonesians at all, given that 5 eyes was specifically set up to allow (amongst others) US access to AUS SIGINT covering the SE asian region, under a pact of mutually shared intelligence?
If it had just been Australia's spy services acting on their own somebody besides Snowden would have to leak it.
Nonsense. Are you not aware that the Australians share (practically) all of their signal intelligence with the US - and vice versa?
This is different from my understanding. Australian immigration easily tops 100,000 annually, and the humanitarian intake is separate, not linked. It was 13,000 for years, Gillard increased it to 20,000,
Yep, pathetically, it could easily be less than 40 000, you are right. In fact, Australia's refugee intake is astoundingly low.
The point is, the refugee intake is limited by our participation in a mutual resettlement program. We have the luxury of being able to resettle most of the refugee's who seek asylum in other countries. We are able to limit our own refugee intake by that means - and that means alone. Whether it is ethical to set a limit remains an open question - certainly the low refugee intake, along with the generally cruel and inhumane manner in which refugees are treated by our supposedly egalitarian and fair country is of concern to many, if not most, Australians.
Participation in that resettlement program depends on remaining under the auspices of the UNHCR and the Convention.
Rudd hinted at increasing it to appease the left when he introduced his PNG plan. I assume it's still 20,000 with the new government.
He should have increased it, and so should the present government. The majority of refugees arriving are still from Iraq and Afghanistan - people that we made refugees, through our participation in the failed military adventures of the US from the last decade.
The last time a circumstance like this occurred was after the Vietnam war, which numbered in the 100's of thousands of refugees. There were some problems. But 30 years on, I doubt there is a single Australian who would change what we did then, who would prefer that the Vietnamese community of Australians were not here. Like many people I have never heard anyone clearly elucidate why this present circumstance should be managed differently.
What is linked, is onshore (boat/plane arrivals) and offshore (the 'queue' in refugee camps) humanitarian arrivals. This link was created by the Howard government and, while possibly fair enough, turns onshore arrivals into 'queue jumpers'.
Slashdot Mirror
A race when an opponent has reached the finish line in friggin 1969?
A fairly arbitrarily selected finish line - as opposed to 'put a probe on the moon', 'put a human in orbit', 'put a craft into interstellar space' or 'achieve useful velocities to enable interplanetary travel', 'send a spacecraft to the moons of Saturn and return it safely to earth' - and so on. Kennedy select one from a list and went for it. Arguably the other options would have served more purpose but didn't involve imagery of brave Americans breaching a new frontier, and thus did not suit the PR driver.
Well, apparently a man on the moon is the second technological feat that is impossible today but achievable in the 70.
Of course it is possible. The difficulty is that, absent fear of the communists or imperialists (depending on which team you go for) there is just no reason to do it.
That is why the Apollo program was shut down of course, due to a gradual realisation that travelling to the Moon served no useful purpose. People love to talk about why it was started, forgetting that the reasons why it was not continued are far more relevant.
Quote where I said I gave up?
Do you have short term memory issues? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4449841&cid=45432619
How does this not contradict your central premise (Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws)?
[null response]
You don't have an answer? You accept that that your argument As to legislation, the reality is that the highly restrictive climate change oriented legislation is deeply unpopular both nationally and internationally. contradicts your initial premise Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws?
What is more, you seem to think that if you just get the US or a couple other countries to sign on its mission accomplished.
Please cite me expressing this point of view or indeed showing any interest at all in what the US is doing.
[null response]
You don't have a response - we'll take it as read then, that this is yet another ill conceived and baseless rant on your part.
Satire is great. Stephen Colbert is great. But it blunts any outrage I might have had over the state-funded science museum not showing the film.
I'm struggling to see why. Satire is not offensive, or least, not nearly as offensive as the kind of untruths we hear from politicians day in and day out. It is a legitimate way to convey a message that sticks in the mind. Should public institutions be forced to convey important public announcements without the aid of any rhetorical device? What of loudspeakers? Some people find them "offensive".
It would be unfortunate indeed if we accepted the right of the anti-science brigade to engage in rhetoric, up to and including very offensive remarks (threats of physical and sexual violence, allegations of pedophillia lagainst leading climate scientists and the like) and denied the right of science to engage in satire to convey facts.
The irony
1. No. You don't get to define my argument.
If your argument consistents of repeatedly screaming "give up! give up!" with no detail on what I ought to give up or what would compel me to give it up I'll make free to interpret your remarks in any way I choose.
As to legislation, the reality is that the highly restrictive climate change oriented legislation is deeply unpopular both nationally and internationally.
If that were true, I fail to see how it would affect legislation that is not highly restrictive. If anything, you are making an argument AGAINST Direct Action (which is purely regulation) and FOR an ETS (which is not). How does this not contradict your central premise (Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws)?
What is more, you seem to think that if you just get the US or a couple other countries to sign on its mission accomplished.
Please cite me expressing this point of view or indeed showing any interest at all in what the US is doing.
China and India won't sign on. The developing world has zero regard for your position.
My position being that Australia has not rejected the need for climate action
And then of course you lapse into a series of disconnected rants which have nothing to do with the point you are trying to make: [snipped]
2. As to giving up, I didn't suggest you give up. I suggested that you stop doing stupid counter productive things that merely serve to irritate people and underscore your incompetence.
Let's consider you judgments in context.
Talk about your cognitive dissonance. What a joke. It's a government conspiracy to control us using legislation, but we shouldn't tell our governments to legislate, because they don't want to do it!
You'll excuse me if I don't take your speculations about my intent, or your judgements about my intellect, or you conspicuously contradictory and uncited views on the feelings of the Australian public very seriously.
If you find that satire is offending you on par with baseless, personal insults as a form of rhetoric, you are missing the point.
Didn't you just tell him not to call people names if you want to be treated with respect?
Well let me see. Here's what I said:
That's a little discourteous. My suggestion is that if you want yourself and your ideas to be treated with respect, that you likewise treat others with respect.
Yes. Yes I did.
I haven't seen the film, but it is entirely possible that it runs afoul of this same advice.
It seems unlikely that the film called someone a stupid f*ck based on zero evidence.
It seems more likely that the film makes reference to the stupid and dangerous legislation in force in North Carolina by suggesting that it is stupid and/or dangerous, which is simply an accurate annotation, something you yourself apparently do not dispute.
Hopefully you are smart enough to see the difference.
C: Cost
M: Cost of mitigation
I: Infrastructure costs for powert distribution
G: Cost of generating Infrastructure
g: Ongoing costs (fuel, maintenance etc)
Suffix
r: renewable
nr: non renewable
Cnr = Mnr + Inr + Gnr + gnr
Cr = Mr + Ir + Gr + gr
Gr > Gnr (for the time being)
Mnr >> Mr
Inr > Ir
gnr > gr
In order for non - renewables to be cost competitive with renewables, Gr - Gnr would need ot be larger than (Mnr - Mr) + ( Inr - Ir ) + (gnr - gr) where M >> G.
This is not likely.
Your assumption seems to be that:
1. Legislation that is not before parliament and looks unlikely to pass through the hostile senate should somehow be considered 'inevitable'. That is not how it works.
2. The huge, growing, and increasingly angry crowd of Australians loudly and insistently demanding action on climate change over and above the promised 5% target reduction by 2020 should 'give up' because a new government was elected with a 5% target, replacing the old government with a 5% target.
After being given repeated opportunities, you apparently can't explain why 'giving up' would the appropriate thing at this juncture.
Whereas the filipinos said was that climate change made typhoon Haiyan worse, and that climate change would continue to make such storms worse into the future.
These two statements are completely different. Typhon Haiyan is not proof of AGW. Tyndall, Fourier and Arrhenius finished 'proving' AGW 100 years ago. Typhoon Haiyan is a visceral reminder of the kinds of things that will happen as the troposphere and oceans warm.
Your ignorance is not my problem, but your own, Google it yourself.
It's not being banned you stupid fuck,
That's a little discourteous. My suggestion is that if you want yourself and your ideas to be treated with respect, that you likewise treat others with respect.
a single museum is deciding not to show what would appear to be a political movie masquerading as a scientific documentary.
Calling stupid legislation stupid is merely accurate labelling. To withhold saying that someone's stupid ideas are stupid on the grounds that that person is a legislator is to engage in politicing.
Is this the same science museum that refused to show "The population Bomb: The Movie", "Ice Age: Year 2010" and all the other variations of were all going to be dead 30 years from now unless we are all forced to adopt whatever leftist ideology is popular at the time?
Why are you asking us? Surely if you want to understand the films content, you could look at TFA yourself, and study the history of the museum.
The environmentalists have taken a page from Harold Camping and all other doomsday cults. Make a prediction that mankind will all be dead, or facing an apocalyptic scenario 30 years from now, and when that 30 years have passed and nothing terrible has happened still insist you are still right and make another prediction for the apocalypse 30 years from now, but this time its real!
Your understanding of the predictions made by climate models is completely off the wall insane, and laughably wrong. You need to get a handle on the basic facts before presuming to criticise either the science of the actions of others in response to that science.
I found a few who said that the increasing severity of these sorts of storms in specific regions is linked to changing climate - but that is completely different statement and to collate the two as one would indeed be disingenuous. And nobody would want to be regarded as disingenuous.
Would they?
Australia just elected a government on an unapologetic anti-carbon tax platform.
The new government has exactly the same emissions target as the old one. They just plan to do it in a less competent fashion.
Very well, full steam ahead.
Indeed. Discussions on the matter are starting today and will ramp up in the coming months. https://www.getup.org.au/get_togethers/climate-catchup. Feel free to join at your location.
I apologize for suggesting your head was not an appropriate implement for breaking rocks.
Not analogous. The most recent surveys indicate that 60% of Australians favour stronger action on climate change. A better analogy would be a giant rock rolling down a hill, crushing all before it.
have you earned a response?
They outright said they wouldn't accept any new socialist provisions masquerading as environmentalism.
Well, they lied.
For one thing, the planned replacement (Direct Action) is far more interventionist (and therefore socialist) than an ETS. Ironic no?
That would include all the carbon trading schemes. So... try again.
I don't think we have an intention to give up. Why would we?
Doctors have known for years that smoking causes lung cancer. When you were younger, you readily believed that smoking causes lung cancer, as does everyone you know. But then because of some idiot friends, and because you yourself are an idiot, you took up smoking. Suddenly, you no longer think that smoking cause lung cancer.
You say you want the medical community to convince you, (not prove but convince) that you, personally, can contract lung cancer by smoking, before you will stop smoking.
When you present this argument to your doctor, he points out a few things:
(a) It's his job to present the facts, it's not his business to convince you. You are responsible for your destructive actions, past, present and future, not the doctor.
(b) If you want to disprove the link between smoking and lung cancer, that's YOUR JOB. Nobody owes you a personal proof, and nobody is going to give you one.
(c) You imagine your fondness for smoking means that you should somehow be compensated for having to give it up - this is delusional. Instead, if someone else contracts cancer because of your second hand smoke, you, yourself, are liable.
(d) The fact that you previously accepted that smoking causes cancer is an indictment against you - you only stopped accepting it because it was difficult for you personally. This has no impact on the concrete pillar of objective facts. Not even a scratch.
In response, you walk out in a huff, vowing never to see a doctor again, after all, the thigns they say are offensive and impede your liberties. Then you die a long slow death - of lung cancer.
Get it now?
Thanks for your strong argument and excellent display of evidence to back it up.
Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws,
No they are not. The previous government was largely dysfunctional. The new government made much noise before the election about removing the ETS in place in Australia because it was slewed toward making big emitters pay, who coincidentally happen to be the primary financiers of the conservative party. Now they feel committed to removing the ETS, but intend to replace it with a system of regulation which will achieve the same ends, but cost considerably more, on the basis that to do otherwise would hurt their financiers, and thus them.
As it turns out they are quite incompetent and seem unable to progress their agenda at all - in this case, due to the widespread unpopularity of their scheme there's every chance they will never get the legislation through - and if they do, it will damage them significantly, since the voices demanding stronger action on climate in Australia are far stronger than the voices saying nothing should be done.
Climate models are currently, at best, when treated as an ensemble (if you buy that as legitimate)
Is there a methodological reason to NOT treat the ensemble as legitimate? Please describe this reasoning in detail.
skirting along the p 0.05 level of significance in the validation period.
Define precisely what you mean by "skirting along". How far below 0.05 are the models results, exactly?
Pointing this out is considered trolling -- it probably offends some religious sensibilities.
I suspect you are misinterpreting the responses. Mostly when we dig down on these sorts of remarks, high level, without data or empirical basis, no repeatable observations, we find them to be the work of some deceptive, brainless, mouth breathing denialist. You might be an ok chap, but I can't really make a conclusion until I've seen the data.
It's a matter of probability. Perhaps someone who sounds like a denialist is, in spite of the evidence, a rational, coherent person who is nevertheless ignorant of the science or misled by paid shills (like Anthony Watts who is paid a salary by the Heartland Institute to LIE about climate science, or Judith Curry, who deliberately misleads by wrapping genuine science in a penumbra of sneering psuedo-scepticism).
Generally the best measure is as follows:
1. The person refuses to provide specifics but only speaks in generalities - likely a committed denialist
2. The person provides specific (albeit incorrect) facts. ignorant or misled by liars
Like many people I have a lot of sympathy for the genuinely misled and will try to help them if I can. The deliberate lies and deception on the part of the denier hierarchy makes my blood boil.
Tightening the threshold as the article suggests would mean the model results are not "significant" (i.e., not reasonably distinguishable from natural variation -
Actually the article makes no mention of anything related to climate science. It is mainly focussed on instances where results are found not to be reproducible and using a frequentist methodology. Climate models are very reproducible and don't use a frequentist method - they make predictions, not observation.
n -- note that I am not a "denier" and that I do accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas etc. etc.; I am however hugely skeptical of most climate and environmental science that I have investigated).
And yet you refer to these supposed problems in the climate science in generalities. Why is that?
In what way ?
The spying in question was allowing the US to use Australian embassies as spy-bases. Snowden had access to the relevant documents solely because the NSA did some heavy lifting in this particular operation.
Nothing in the article suggests that this is the case, and in numerous media reports and details of the leak itself say otherwise. Why would the US use the Australian embassy? Why wouldn't they use their own? Why would they bother surveiling the Indonesians at all, given that 5 eyes was specifically set up to allow (amongst others) US access to AUS SIGINT covering the SE asian region, under a pact of mutually shared intelligence?
If it had just been Australia's spy services acting on their own somebody besides Snowden would have to leak it.
Nonsense. Are you not aware that the Australians share (practically) all of their signal intelligence with the US - and vice versa?
This is different from my understanding. Australian immigration easily tops 100,000 annually, and the humanitarian intake is separate, not linked. It was 13,000 for years, Gillard increased it to 20,000,
Yep, pathetically, it could easily be less than 40 000, you are right. In fact, Australia's refugee intake is astoundingly low.
However just 3441 asylum seekers were given refuge in Australia last year, roughly one per cent of the total migration to Australia during 2009. From http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2011/01/05/glance-who-takes-most-asylum-claims
The point is, the refugee intake is limited by our participation in a mutual resettlement program. We have the luxury of being able to resettle most of the refugee's who seek asylum in other countries. We are able to limit our own refugee intake by that means - and that means alone. Whether it is ethical to set a limit remains an open question - certainly the low refugee intake, along with the generally cruel and inhumane manner in which refugees are treated by our supposedly egalitarian and fair country is of concern to many, if not most, Australians.
Participation in that resettlement program depends on remaining under the auspices of the UNHCR and the Convention.
Rudd hinted at increasing it to appease the left when he introduced his PNG plan. I assume it's still 20,000 with the new government.
He should have increased it, and so should the present government. The majority of refugees arriving are still from Iraq and Afghanistan - people that we made refugees, through our participation in the failed military adventures of the US from the last decade.
The last time a circumstance like this occurred was after the Vietnam war, which numbered in the 100's of thousands of refugees. There were some problems. But 30 years on, I doubt there is a single Australian who would change what we did then, who would prefer that the Vietnamese community of Australians were not here. Like many people I have never heard anyone clearly elucidate why this present circumstance should be managed differently.
What is linked, is onshore (boat/plane arrivals) and offshore (the 'queue' in refugee camps) humanitarian arrivals. This link was created by the Howard government and, while possibly fair enough, turns onshore arrivals into 'queue jumpers'.
Incorrect