1) I want to see that CO2 causes the greenhouse effect (this is actually fairly well established by evidence).
2) I want to see that atmospheric CO2 is also increasing (also fairly well established)
3) I want to see that the global temperature is rising (some folks dispute this, but in fact the temperature record for the last few decades seems not unreasonable to me)
4) I want to see demonstrated that the rise in CO2 is having a significant effect on the global climate. This has NOT been demonstrated with any degree of certainty.
I've looked all over to find evidence of number 4, and I haven't seen a conclusive link anywhere. There is, on the other hand, evidence that other unknown processes in the environment are having a bigger effect on global temperature than CO2.
I guess you probably don't realise how bizarre that sounds outside of your own head!
Specifically, 1,2 and 3 mean that 4 is the logical conclusion.
To accept the basis of the theory of anthropogenic climate change (that is 1-3), but then conclude that the current warming is caused by some as yet unknown phenomena is a leap of faith well beyond most of us.
So you start by stating how rational you think the view on terrorism has been, and go on to lament that we don't (enough) apply the same hysteria to climate change?
You've misinterpreted what the OP was saying. I suspect deliberately.
With the current level of polemic, those who point out holes in your arguments are painted as akin to holocaust deniers, flat-earthers and creationists and now as apparently so cynical that they care more for a cup of coffee than for people who see their land go underwater.
Well firstly, the denialist movement hasn't found any holes in the theory. Which kind of makes your argument a non-sequitur, but never mind. The reason the term "denialist" is in common use is for the following reasons:
The incorrect use of the term "sceptic" to describe the movement.
The style of argument used i.e a continual stream of denials, without supporting evidence
The close resemblance of the logic used to the logic used by a person in denial. Dealing with Climate Change will be hard work, and painful, and it also requires some people to adjust their worldview.
It seems so hysterical at times that if someone tries to object to this coffee claim by pointing out that it seems likely that the coffee plant would be able to *adapt* to climate change, the way it and everyone else on this planet has been doing for quite a while, it would almost not surprise me to see him labeled a "creationist"...
Your use of the highlighted phrase indicates that you either don't understand the issue or are deliberately misrepresenting the issue for the sake of burning a strawman. That is - to be explicit - nobody is claiming that the climate is not constantly undergoing change, and that species don't adapt to it. The problem is the current rate of change leaves species (including us) insufficient time to adapt. To use a car analogy - normal climate changes are like a car accelerating and decelerating for stop lights and traffic. The current climate crisis is a collision. Only a blibbering idiot (or a liar) would equate the two on the basis of (a) actual speed at a point in time or (b) the fact that the car accelerates and decelerates as part of it's normal operation.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed.
But upon experimentation we found evidence that said otherwise, and on the basis of that evidence, our understanding of reality changed. Still some people clung to the old mythology. So you can't justify the notion that you don't have cancer on the basis of past mistakes in medicine because the evidence is with the doctors, and not with you and your comforting mythology.
Well, I think you'll find that the the CRU is a public organisation and thus bound by guidelines and procedures set out in the Freedom of Information Act. http://www.cfoi.org.uk/pdf/foi_guide.pdf
Under the guidelines:
They are obliged to assess the FOI request to ensure it meets the criteria
They are not obliged to provide the information if they judge that the request is "vexatious" e.g the requestor is deliberately trying to waste their time. It would, in fact be quite reasonable for a scientist in that position to judge repetitive requests from a lunatic fringe of climate change deniers/conspiracy theorists as vexacious. After all, climate change deniers have long based their platform of conspiracy on the notion that accepting money to study climate change means you are a liar.
They are obliged to provide the information in the format requested - ie they can't just post it on a website or send a link
So they are quite entitled BY LAW to say no to an FOI request, based on defensible criteria in this circumstance.
And to those who say the data is out there, it's just not. A lot of the adjusted data is there but the list of stations used, the raw measurements, the reasoning for adjusting the data and how isn't.
As other posters have pointed out the sites were chosen by an automated process, and the criteria used by that process IS publicly available. And the unadjusted data IS available, since the CRU didn't collect it, the data can be obtained from the sources that THEY received it from. And the methodology IS available, as is the reasoning behind it.
Which begs the question for the climate change deniers - where is the smoking gun?
Does this also count, if the "skeptics" do not use science to make their case, are given media exposure much greater than their viewpoint is worth, and has funding that far exceeds the research funding of the real scientists?
Or indeed, that "sceptics" fail even to present a case, presuming it the responsibility of others to convince them of facts they do not like, and that failure to convince means a failure in fact?
Folks, here's a clue. If you go to the doctor and she says
"I'm sorry, you have lung cancer" couching you dismay at that presented news by a pretence at scepticism will not change the fact that you very likely have lung cancer. There might be small chance you do not. But saying "oh I heard of a doctor in England that said a person had lung cancer and he did not AND THEREFORE I DO NOT" is a logical fallacy. To mistrust the doctor merely because the news is bad is an indication of denial. And most importantly of all, it won't change the fact that you have cancer.
Collectively, these alternatives have become known as NoSQL databases. The fundamental problem is that relational databases cannot handle many modern workloads.
I'm sceptical. Why is the problem worse now then in the past?
Relational theory in practice is abstracting the data such that a human/application can understand it as logical constructs. How the data is PHYSICALLY organised is a matter of implementation - the relational theory doesn't place any constraint (!) on how the data is organised/retrieved/updated - except that by giving a broad design pattern , duplication is minmised, and so then is processing overhead. MPP (Parallel Processing) lends itself quite neatly to any large set of data - many implementations will continue to scale linearly above the PB size (e.g Teradata).
Looks to me like a sales pitch.
You really don't really adhere to "atheism". You simply don't believe what others have told you because it doesn't make any sense.
So an atheist told me that there was no God. I didn't believe him, because that assertion made no sense. Does that mean I'm really an atheist? How will I resolve my disbelief of atheism with my atheism?
Not wanting to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you VASIMIR powered car fanatics? I've been sitting in my freelance camry with an attached VASIMIR (a 8600/300 w/64 Kg Propulsion Mass) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to transfer a 17*10^1 kg Slashdot reader from his home to the electronics store. 20 minutes. At home, on my RD-180 powered Datsun running Kerosene, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this VASIMIR, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
This is the argument of the Stern review [wikipedia.org] conducted by the UK government.
Yes, these are the uncontradicted projections laid out by Stern, the economist.
The problem is that the cost of reducing CO2 is largely unknown, as is the damage caused to the global economy. So this trade off between now and later is largely based on which made-up numbers you put into the balance.
Who says the numbers are made up? Where is the evidence for this claim? Where are the counter projections?
Surely, since Stern has made a study of these projections, and is an expert in the field, logic would suggest going with THOSE results, rather than random people who claim without any supporting evidence, that the model is only as accurate as a random guess?
One thing is pretty clear; if we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to put a price on CO2, and it needs to rise fast. And it will be painful. Will it be more painful than the consequences of global warming? Who knows. More importantly, who wants to bet?
Sure, it will be painful. Cancer treatment is also painful. At this juncture, gambling that "adaption" would cost less than mitigation is like gambling that you will recover from cancer without the expense of treatment.
What do you really think happens if we continue to warm the earth? Do you really think, like the cancer, that after "a little while" it will "just get better by itself"?
It is certainly true that climate change due to anthropogenic causes is now inevitable - it's already happening, and, as you say, even if we went straight to zero (net) emissions, the imbalance we have created will take a long time to rebalance. The temperature has already risen by 0.75 degrees - 2 degrees is in the zone which scientists call 'dangerous' climate change - we are nearly half way there already.
However, drastic cutbacks in our emissions are inevitable. Option 1 is to make those cutbacks now. Under this option, we avoid what is euphemistically called 'the worst' of climate change. There is still damage to the global economy, but it is minimised. Option 2 is to not make those changes based on some ridiculous premise. Under this strategy, we will need to mitigate the effects, that is 'adapt' -adaption is much, much more expensive than mitigation. Inevitably, the cost will be such that industry, commerce and agriculture are reduced, as is personal finance to purchase fuel etc. These reductions will forcibly reduce our emissions.
The options are - pay a little now, pay a LOT later.
You do know that this isn't the warmest the Earth's ever been, right?
Sounds like you think the problem with anthropogenic climate change is the static mean temperature. If you don't even understand the issue, why would we accept your alternate theories?
I like how a less than one degree of change over the past 200 years is clearly not normal. What's even more interesting is that pro-global warming charts only go back 200 years or so (some go back 500 years). And not say...back past 10,000 years ago. Which was the end of the last ice age. Of which there have been many.
Again, it sounds like you don't understand the problem well enough for your theories to have credence.
I'm not going to go so far as to say with 100% certainty that mankind isn't responsible for any of the warming. However, until you (and pro-global warming people like you) even acknowledge that the planet changes its temperate most of the time, I just can't take you seriously.
Not to be rude, but why does it matter whether or not you accept it? Come time for the Copenhagen round of talks, there will be no discussion on whether or not Climate Change is real nor it's cause. It will simply be a wrestle between those with a short term view (protecting the coal industry) and those with a longer term view (protecting the future economy and well being of our race as a whole). Nobody is going to ringing you to ask your opinion or permission. If you want to prevent action on Climate Change, if you want to prevent economic measures in that stead, you will need to produce some pretty convincing evidence for your alternate theory on what is actually causing the warming we are experiencing. If the denialist movement is marked by one thing, it is a lack of detail and any observable metrics to justify your theories.
A quick look at the synopsis indicates to me that this is an article about the effects of atlantic currents on glacial cooling in the context of the ice age cycle. To quote:
A global coupled oceanâ"atmosphere model of intermediate complexity is used to simulate the equilibrium climate of both today and the Last Glacial Maximum, around 21,000 years ago. The model successfully predicts the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, temperature distribution, hydrological cycle and sea-ice cover of both periods without using 'flux adjustments'. Changes in oceanic circulation, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, play an important role in glacial cooling.
How exactly, do such conclusions support your assertion of a natural short term cycle of global warming/cooling? Please be precise in your answer.
Just in case you were serious - there are 3 reasons why this would never, ever work
Geology - crops require soil to grow. Under the ice, Antarctica is rock. Siberia is not much better.
Latitude - cereal crops are adapted to the amount of sunlight received at temperate latitudes. At the polar latitudes, it is dark for the whole winter, and then quickly progresses to long periods of day. Cereal crops will not grow in those light conditions
Geo-political - the polar regions aren't exactly divided up in a way that suits the current geopolitical structures. In the North, it's mostly Russia and Canada. In the South, its a complex arrangement set by the Antarctic treaty which China has already signified it doesn't intend to abide by. How will the land be divvied up - will we fight for it?
What if the point is to eventually get humans off of Earth and out into the broader universe?
If this really IS the aim, then it would be good if someone were to say so, because then we can took a look and see firstly, how realistic this is, and secondly, whether we actually think it is a worthwhile aim.
Actually, you probably could, if you didn't mind having test tube babies from frozen embryos raised by machines as Earth's emissaries.
Of all possible options, certainly frozen embryos are the most feasible and attractive. Mostly because at the end of say, a 5000 year trip, the embryos would be the less genetically divergent from the humans at home then any theoretical space faring mutants. Also it overcomes the basic engineering difficulty- that no known fuel/engine , even theorised engines such as fusion or matter/anti-matter reactions are energy dense enough to propell a craft from our star system to another 50+ light years away, and then decelerate, carry the required fuel PLUS a habitat for live humans.
Atheists realize that every species becomes either space-faring, or extinct. The Earth will not be around forever.
But apparently they DON'T realise that every species becomes extinct sooner or later.
Christians believe that they will be abducted by a sky-zombie and taken to fairy-land. It says so right in this book!
Lot's of atheists also believe in space fairies and "sky zombies" - they just call them aliens. In fact I misuse the term 'also' since believing in aliens is in fact much more like believing in sky zombies then believing in a Deity or Deities.
This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense.
Thanks for clearing that up for us.
Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts, but for millions, perhaps billions, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
I hate to break it you but:
"Mankind" has no Manifest Destiny
On the whole, very few people subscribe to the theology of a Manifest Destiny any more - mostly because the purpose of the Manifest Destiny was for Europeans to justify invading someone elses land, taking their stuff and making money from the ill gotten gains.
So while you might hope for and preach a revival, the vast majority of our race NEVER subscribed to it and is quite justified in letting it lie in it's grave.
. People have been asking why are when spending $X (what seems like a really big number) on manned space flight when we've been there, done that, and have Y number of problems still back on earth.
Actually I think people are beginning to say why are we spending $X sending humans to do something a robot can do faster, cheaper and more reliably for one tenth the price.
NASA may continue to fund some great robotic programs, but it doesn't capture the public's mind.
Speak for yourself. I distinctly remember as a child poring over the photos and discoveries made by Voyager 1 and 2 and dreaming of what lay beyond that frontier, awaiting discovery by our non-human servants.
And in any case, is that really important? If we TRULY think exploring space is worthwhile for objective reasons, perhaps those objective reasons should be the driver and the inspiration, rather than the light and sound show of human space travel.
Citation Needed. Every history I've read indicates that the invention of the IC was quite independent of the apollo program (happening some years before, in fact). And further - since it's inception, the IC has followed a refinement curve in accordance with Moores Law. I'd say you are repeating myth.
The phenomenon you are describing is actually post modernism, and not due to teh rise of teh eeevil evangelicals. In short, we grew distrustful of the faux rationalism of modernism, and sick of waiting for it to deliver it's widely tumpeted predictions of a better, more just future. Don't blame evangelicals for the failure of modernism. Modernists/Atheists have no-one to blame but themselves.
1. The ultimate payoff is the eventual ability to spread beyond the solar system. In the grand scheme of things it's the most important long-term survival strategy for mankind.
I, for one, would prefer that we try and preserve womankind as well!
But in all seriousness, we need to consider whether that goal actually has a worthwhile payoff. Inter-system "colonies" are not practical as a survival mechanism. We could not communicate with the "colony", and they have no motivation -nor mechanism - for preserving our history, our achievements, our ethics. They would need to genetically adapt to their new planet, which effectively means that when earth is lost, humanity itself will be lost.
A far better approach (if one is needed) is to preserve our DNA in a safe, and bootable form - Off world, if need be. In the event of a extinction level disaster, an off world ark swings by and at the appropriate time, re-seeds the earth with all the genome that was lost in the disaster. This is much closer to being achievable then trying to keep LIVE copies of humans (AND all other species) on another planet or in space somewhere.
Or we can simply accept our own mortality as a species. There is no shame in that.
2. The proximate payoff are the myriad of technologies we would develop for building the stupid thing, which would have a direct and measurable impact all over the world... and would have an even greater impact on our relationship with the rest of the solar system.
3.
Of course, the same claim has been made about human space flight in the past, and the resulting useful technology has been effectively zip (TANG excluded of course). Perhaps if we have an actual technological NEED (e.g. better housing or energy generation) we should develop for the need instead.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I want to see that CO2 causes the greenhouse effect (this is actually fairly well established by evidence). 2) I want to see that atmospheric CO2 is also increasing (also fairly well established) 3) I want to see that the global temperature is rising (some folks dispute this, but in fact the temperature record for the last few decades seems not unreasonable to me) 4) I want to see demonstrated that the rise in CO2 is having a significant effect on the global climate. This has NOT been demonstrated with any degree of certainty. I've looked all over to find evidence of number 4, and I haven't seen a conclusive link anywhere. There is, on the other hand, evidence that other unknown processes in the environment are having a bigger effect on global temperature than CO2.
I guess you probably don't realise how bizarre that sounds outside of your own head!
Specifically, 1,2 and 3 mean that 4 is the logical conclusion.
To accept the basis of the theory of anthropogenic climate change (that is 1-3), but then conclude that the current warming is caused by some as yet unknown phenomena is a leap of faith well beyond most of us.
So you start by stating how rational you think the view on terrorism has been, and go on to lament that we don't (enough) apply the same hysteria to climate change?
You've misinterpreted what the OP was saying. I suspect deliberately.
With the current level of polemic, those who point out holes in your arguments are painted as akin to holocaust deniers, flat-earthers and creationists and now as apparently so cynical that they care more for a cup of coffee than for people who see their land go underwater.
Well firstly, the denialist movement hasn't found any holes in the theory. Which kind of makes your argument a non-sequitur, but never mind. The reason the term "denialist" is in common use is for the following reasons:
It seems so hysterical at times that if someone tries to object to this coffee claim by pointing out that it seems likely that the coffee plant would be able to *adapt* to climate change, the way it and everyone else on this planet has been doing for quite a while, it would almost not surprise me to see him labeled a "creationist"...
Your use of the highlighted phrase indicates that you either don't understand the issue or are deliberately misrepresenting the issue for the sake of burning a strawman. That is - to be explicit - nobody is claiming that the climate is not constantly undergoing change, and that species don't adapt to it. The problem is the current rate of change leaves species (including us) insufficient time to adapt. To use a car analogy - normal climate changes are like a car accelerating and decelerating for stop lights and traffic. The current climate crisis is a collision. Only a blibbering idiot (or a liar) would equate the two on the basis of (a) actual speed at a point in time or (b) the fact that the car accelerates and decelerates as part of it's normal operation.
Maybe it's about time that changed.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed.
But upon experimentation we found evidence that said otherwise, and on the basis of that evidence, our understanding of reality changed. Still some people clung to the old mythology. So you can't justify the notion that you don't have cancer on the basis of past mistakes in medicine because the evidence is with the doctors, and not with you and your comforting mythology.
They are not obliged to provide the information if they judge that the request is "vexatious" e.g the requestor is deliberately trying to waste their time. It would, in fact be quite reasonable for a scientist in that position to judge repetitive requests from a lunatic fringe of climate change deniers/conspiracy theorists as vexacious. After all, climate change deniers have long based their platform of conspiracy on the notion that accepting money to study climate change means you are a liar.
So they are quite entitled BY LAW to say no to an FOI request, based on defensible criteria in this circumstance.
And to those who say the data is out there, it's just not. A lot of the adjusted data is there but the list of stations used, the raw measurements, the reasoning for adjusting the data and how isn't.
As other posters have pointed out the sites were chosen by an automated process, and the criteria used by that process IS publicly available. And the unadjusted data IS available, since the CRU didn't collect it, the data can be obtained from the sources that THEY received it from. And the methodology IS available, as is the reasoning behind it.
Which begs the question for the climate change deniers - where is the smoking gun?
Does this also count, if the "skeptics" do not use science to make their case, are given media exposure much greater than their viewpoint is worth, and has funding that far exceeds the research funding of the real scientists?
Or indeed, that "sceptics" fail even to present a case, presuming it the responsibility of others to convince them of facts they do not like, and that failure to convince means a failure in fact?
Folks, here's a clue. If you go to the doctor and she says
"I'm sorry, you have lung cancer"
couching you dismay at that presented news by a pretence at scepticism will not change the fact that you very likely have lung cancer. There might be small chance you do not. But saying "oh I heard of a doctor in England that said a person had lung cancer and he did not AND THEREFORE I DO NOT" is a logical fallacy. To mistrust the doctor merely because the news is bad is an indication of denial. And most importantly of all, it won't change the fact that you have cancer.
Collectively, these alternatives have become known as NoSQL databases. The fundamental problem is that relational databases cannot handle many modern workloads.
I'm sceptical. Why is the problem worse now then in the past? Relational theory in practice is abstracting the data such that a human/application can understand it as logical constructs. How the data is PHYSICALLY organised is a matter of implementation - the relational theory doesn't place any constraint (!) on how the data is organised/retrieved/updated - except that by giving a broad design pattern , duplication is minmised, and so then is processing overhead. MPP (Parallel Processing) lends itself quite neatly to any large set of data - many implementations will continue to scale linearly above the PB size (e.g Teradata). Looks to me like a sales pitch.
I guess the point of my example went past when you were looking the other way.
You really don't really adhere to "atheism". You simply don't believe what others have told you because it doesn't make any sense.
So an atheist told me that there was no God. I didn't believe him, because that assertion made no sense. Does that mean I'm really an atheist? How will I resolve my disbelief of atheism with my atheism?
Not wanting to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you VASIMIR powered car fanatics? I've been sitting in my freelance camry with an attached VASIMIR (a 8600/300 w/64 Kg Propulsion Mass) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to transfer a 17*10^1 kg Slashdot reader from his home to the electronics store. 20 minutes. At home, on my RD-180 powered Datsun running Kerosene, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this VASIMIR, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
This is the argument of the Stern review [wikipedia.org] conducted by the UK government.
Yes, these are the uncontradicted projections laid out by Stern, the economist.
The problem is that the cost of reducing CO2 is largely unknown, as is the damage caused to the global economy. So this trade off between now and later is largely based on which made-up numbers you put into the balance.
Who says the numbers are made up? Where is the evidence for this claim? Where are the counter projections? Surely, since Stern has made a study of these projections, and is an expert in the field, logic would suggest going with THOSE results, rather than random people who claim without any supporting evidence, that the model is only as accurate as a random guess?
One thing is pretty clear; if we want to reduce carbon emissions, we need to put a price on CO2, and it needs to rise fast. And it will be painful. Will it be more painful than the consequences of global warming? Who knows. More importantly, who wants to bet?
Sure, it will be painful. Cancer treatment is also painful. At this juncture, gambling that "adaption" would cost less than mitigation is like gambling that you will recover from cancer without the expense of treatment. What do you really think happens if we continue to warm the earth? Do you really think, like the cancer, that after "a little while" it will "just get better by itself"?
It is certainly true that climate change due to anthropogenic causes is now inevitable - it's already happening, and, as you say, even if we went straight to zero (net) emissions, the imbalance we have created will take a long time to rebalance. The temperature has already risen by 0.75 degrees - 2 degrees is in the zone which scientists call 'dangerous' climate change - we are nearly half way there already. However, drastic cutbacks in our emissions are inevitable. Option 1 is to make those cutbacks now. Under this option, we avoid what is euphemistically called 'the worst' of climate change. There is still damage to the global economy, but it is minimised. Option 2 is to not make those changes based on some ridiculous premise. Under this strategy, we will need to mitigate the effects, that is 'adapt' -adaption is much, much more expensive than mitigation. Inevitably, the cost will be such that industry, commerce and agriculture are reduced, as is personal finance to purchase fuel etc. These reductions will forcibly reduce our emissions. The options are - pay a little now, pay a LOT later.
Not impossible - unpossible. Ralph Wiggam predicted this.
Goat C. Worst. Syntax. Ever.
You do know that this isn't the warmest the Earth's ever been, right?
Sounds like you think the problem with anthropogenic climate change is the static mean temperature. If you don't even understand the issue, why would we accept your alternate theories?
I like how a less than one degree of change over the past 200 years is clearly not normal. What's even more interesting is that pro-global warming charts only go back 200 years or so (some go back 500 years). And not say...back past 10,000 years ago. Which was the end of the last ice age. Of which there have been many.
Again, it sounds like you don't understand the problem well enough for your theories to have credence.
I'm not going to go so far as to say with 100% certainty that mankind isn't responsible for any of the warming. However, until you (and pro-global warming people like you) even acknowledge that the planet changes its temperate most of the time, I just can't take you seriously.
Not to be rude, but why does it matter whether or not you accept it? Come time for the Copenhagen round of talks, there will be no discussion on whether or not Climate Change is real nor it's cause. It will simply be a wrestle between those with a short term view (protecting the coal industry) and those with a longer term view (protecting the future economy and well being of our race as a whole). Nobody is going to ringing you to ask your opinion or permission. If you want to prevent action on Climate Change, if you want to prevent economic measures in that stead, you will need to produce some pretty convincing evidence for your alternate theory on what is actually causing the warming we are experiencing. If the denialist movement is marked by one thing, it is a lack of detail and any observable metrics to justify your theories.
But perhaps this all is a cycle, because there is peer-reviewed scientific basis for the prediction of catastrophic "Global Cooling." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6665/abs/391351a0.html [nature.com]
A quick look at the synopsis indicates to me that this is an article about the effects of atlantic currents on glacial cooling in the context of the ice age cycle. To quote:
A global coupled oceanâ"atmosphere model of intermediate complexity is used to simulate the equilibrium climate of both today and the Last Glacial Maximum, around 21,000 years ago. The model successfully predicts the atmospheric and oceanic circulations, temperature distribution, hydrological cycle and sea-ice cover of both periods without using 'flux adjustments'. Changes in oceanic circulation, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean, play an important role in glacial cooling.
How exactly, do such conclusions support your assertion of a natural short term cycle of global warming/cooling? Please be precise in your answer.
The 2nd amendment to what? The Basset Hound Breeders Handbook?
What if the point is to eventually get humans off of Earth and out into the broader universe?
If this really IS the aim, then it would be good if someone were to say so, because then we can took a look and see firstly, how realistic this is, and secondly, whether we actually think it is a worthwhile aim.
Actually, you probably could, if you didn't mind having test tube babies from frozen embryos raised by machines as Earth's emissaries.
Of all possible options, certainly frozen embryos are the most feasible and attractive. Mostly because at the end of say, a 5000 year trip, the embryos would be the less genetically divergent from the humans at home then any theoretical space faring mutants. Also it overcomes the basic engineering difficulty- that no known fuel/engine , even theorised engines such as fusion or matter/anti-matter reactions are energy dense enough to propell a craft from our star system to another 50+ light years away, and then decelerate, carry the required fuel PLUS a habitat for live humans.
Having said that the starting question is - why?
Atheists realize that every species becomes either space-faring, or extinct. The Earth will not be around forever.
But apparently they DON'T realise that every species becomes extinct sooner or later.
Christians believe that they will be abducted by a sky-zombie and taken to fairy-land. It says so right in this book!
Lot's of atheists also believe in space fairies and "sky zombies" - they just call them aliens. In fact I misuse the term 'also' since believing in aliens is in fact much more like believing in sky zombies then believing in a Deity or Deities.
Aliens - come from the sky
Deities - don't.
Aliens - like zombies?
Deities - not.
So a probable 1/2 beats a probable 0/2...
This "Send Robots Instead" nonsense is just that -- Nonsense.
Thanks for clearing that up for us.
Mankind's Manifest Destiny may have nothing but an unmarked grave in your hearts, but for millions, perhaps billions, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
I hate to break it you but:
So while you might hope for and preach a revival, the vast majority of our race NEVER subscribed to it and is quite justified in letting it lie in it's grave.
. People have been asking why are when spending $X (what seems like a really big number) on manned space flight when we've been there, done that, and have Y number of problems still back on earth.
Actually I think people are beginning to say why are we spending $X sending humans to do something a robot can do faster, cheaper and more reliably for one tenth the price.
NASA may continue to fund some great robotic programs, but it doesn't capture the public's mind.
Speak for yourself. I distinctly remember as a child poring over the photos and discoveries made by Voyager 1 and 2 and dreaming of what lay beyond that frontier, awaiting discovery by our non-human servants.
And in any case, is that really important? If we TRULY think exploring space is worthwhile for objective reasons, perhaps those objective reasons should be the driver and the inspiration, rather than the light and sound show of human space travel.
Citation Needed. Every history I've read indicates that the invention of the IC was quite independent of the apollo program (happening some years before, in fact). And further - since it's inception, the IC has followed a refinement curve in accordance with Moores Law. I'd say you are repeating myth.
The phenomenon you are describing is actually post modernism, and not due to teh rise of teh eeevil evangelicals. In short, we grew distrustful of the faux rationalism of modernism, and sick of waiting for it to deliver it's widely tumpeted predictions of a better, more just future. Don't blame evangelicals for the failure of modernism. Modernists/Atheists have no-one to blame but themselves.
1. The ultimate payoff is the eventual ability to spread beyond the solar system. In the grand scheme of things it's the most important long-term survival strategy for mankind.
I, for one, would prefer that we try and preserve womankind as well!
But in all seriousness, we need to consider whether that goal actually has a worthwhile payoff. Inter-system "colonies" are not practical as a survival mechanism. We could not communicate with the "colony", and they have no motivation -nor mechanism - for preserving our history, our achievements, our ethics. They would need to genetically adapt to their new planet, which effectively means that when earth is lost, humanity itself will be lost.
A far better approach (if one is needed) is to preserve our DNA in a safe, and bootable form - Off world, if need be. In the event of a extinction level disaster, an off world ark swings by and at the appropriate time, re-seeds the earth with all the genome that was lost in the disaster. This is much closer to being achievable then trying to keep LIVE copies of humans (AND all other species) on another planet or in space somewhere.
Or we can simply accept our own mortality as a species. There is no shame in that.
2. The proximate payoff are the myriad of technologies we would develop for building the stupid thing, which would have a direct and measurable impact all over the world... and would have an even greater impact on our relationship with the rest of the solar system. 3.
Of course, the same claim has been made about human space flight in the past, and the resulting useful technology has been effectively zip (TANG excluded of course). Perhaps if we have an actual technological NEED (e.g. better housing or energy generation) we should develop for the need instead.