The move to market economy in China (in the 90's) started with the speech which could be summarized as "we ran out of money" by Chinese Premier. At that point the government was. Private enterprises was allowed (ie, not suppressed through absolute regulation).
You are an idiot.
No, you. Germany is still the only country not slipping to malaise of the rest of the west. And it is precisely because it implemented the austerity measures. Oh, and did I mention that you are still an idiot?
But it, nonetheless, discredits the prize when a prize holder spouts such provable nonsense. I mean it's almost as if a winner of a prize in medicine started doubting existence of DNA. It would undermine the prize itself.
Nobel has lost all credibility as a prize in economics because Krugman got it. Almost any economist who made predictions which have been verified as having come true considers him a charlatan.
For example Austerity has never gotten anyone out of a recession.
Wow! That is incredibly untrue. Shrinking government spending (while deregulating private activity) caused a boom in China. It has also made Germany the only stable economy in Western Europe in the recent years. Austerity itself is a loaded word. It's not that the government has to just cut the money it spends. It has to also get out of the way. For example, cutting government expenses by shifting them to the private sector, is not going to solve anything. It will only increase regulatory costs. But cutting government expenses by cutting government involvement has been beneficial in most economies in which government had previously was TOO involved in economic activity.
So can we please stop calling neo-Marxists "Keynesian?" Keynes' theory predicted that expansion could be accomplished by government disposing of excess collections through spending. He never proposed or advocated deficit spending as a way to expand economy. Even Keynesian economics predicts that long-term deficit spending would cause a contraction.
Not really. Main cost in generation is cost of energy. And the cost of energy is controlled by cost of world-wide generation and use of natural resources. These are fungible.
At the current difficulty (you know what that means if you mine bitcoins) and the current rates of kW-hours in the US, it would take about $0.35 of electricity to generate $0.02 of bitcoins. The cost of power if the main cost of generating. There has been a steady decline in the exchange rate of bitcoins in the past month and at the same time a steady decline in the difficulty. These two are supposed to be inversely proportional. The only conclusion I reached was that the proportion of bitcoins generated with stolen cycles or stolen power is rising. Not coincidentally, there was recently a report of increasing use of botnets for bitcoin generation (that would be the increased number of stolen cycles). Apparently, people with access to electricity paid through commons are contributing to the generation of bitcoins from stolen electricity.
Pandas don't reproduce in captivity. Generally that's a good sign of depression. Laying around and being inactive all day is another sign of depression. Btw, your signature is hilarious.
The conclusions are a bit dubious. Read the comments after the article (in the link you provided). Even if the study were to be taken on its face, it wouldn't contradict the thesis that certain species of algae would increase in biomass and eventually become more dominant. They can only claim an overall decline because they measured the declining species with the weight that they had in the overall population before the decline began. But 21% of showed significant increase in biomass. So the thesis that some species are better adapted at the new conditions stands. Change does not mean annihilation. It means change. And in a warmer climate, the natural change will be the eventual increase in the biomass. Again, with time species which dedicate more calories to proliferation than to maintenance will come to dominate in warmer temperatures.
Well, the original question stands than. Has anyone measured the amount of biomass of algae? Trends don't have to develop at the same rate to counteract each other. The CO2 released is linear (based on the amount of energy consumed) whereas population growths tend to follow the logistic equation which behaves as an exponential equation until a certain saturation point. Exponential growths tend to start slow and have most of their gains towards the end. So if there is a slow uptrend in algae's biomass, it means it would eventually overtake the uptrend in CO2 gains. The thing is, even if there isn't such an uptrend yet, because evolutionary advantages in lower life forms appear much more quickly, there is nothing to say that one won't appear due to adaptation at some point in the future. Certainly, if pests adapt to pesticides and viruses adapt to antibiotics, it's not out of the ordinary to expect that algae would adapt to newer water conditions. And lower life forms' adaptation to higher temperature levels is almost universally higher reproductive rate (less calories needed to sustain life = more calories available for reproduction).
Probably on "computational" level though. Differential geometry can very quickly get bogged down in the proofs which need topology or differential topology. I'd say Tensor Calculus would probably contain enough of differential geometry in it to give you a start. If you want a fairly good (formal) introduction to multi-variable calculus, work your way through Spivak's "Calculus on Manifolds." Doing problems is more important than reading the book, by the way. But if you really want this to happen on your own (rather than be a pipe dream), you need to work out a study schedule which will make sure that you are not forgetting faster than you are learning. This doesn't mean learning faster. It means scheduling reviews at appropriate intervals. Something along the lines of (for each topic) study/problems for 2 days, 1 week gap, 2 days, 2 weeks gap, 1 day, 1 month gap, 1 day, 3 months gap, 1 day. Play with these as your schedule varies and as you learn more about your own ability to retain information.
This is a political debating tool. It is certainly NOT a scientific debating tool. So why is it that the proponents of AGW believe it's ok for them to use adversarial review tactics, but insist that their opposition must submit to the peer review? Isn't such an insistence in itself an adversarial review tactic?
Ocean acidification is occurring. It's been measured.
I should have been more clear. Thank you. What I meant is that the trend of increasing acidity will only continue indefinitely if the trend of decreasing acidity (due to increased uptake of CO2 by an increasing algae population) will not counteract it.
The sun's activity has decreased over the past 30 years
While this is interesting in itself (if it's a fact, of course; I'd appreciate a quote), it has nothing to do with the point under discussion. The particular natural activity to which I was referring in the gp was the changes in algae population. Which means that here:
It is significantly less plausible that the world is warming because the sun is cooling.
you are arguing with a point which hasn't been made.
By the way, just because you have a theory which fits all the known and considered facts, doesn't mean that it's accurate. This is why reproducible testing (ie, experimentation) is necessary. It used to fit all the known facts that the world rested on the back of a giant turtle. That didn't make it a scientific theory. Because there was an experiment which could be performed to disprove it.
Evolution is reproducible though. Mutations are the only way to explain development of new virus strains and natural mutations are observable. So while any one mutation may not be reproducible, the idea of evolution through occasional mutation can be observed over and over.
Like when a geologist says that the Grand Canyon was created by the Colorado river
I would assume he says it based on something other than 1 time observation of river flowing through that space. I would assume he says it based on observations of what's left there now. And observing what's left there now is very much reproducible.
when a paleontologist says that fossils were created by mineral deposits
again, the actual fossils can be examined by other paleontologists. whereas an "actual" temperature reading is as fleeting as time.
So basically you're saying that any field of study that deals with the past cannot be science.
not at all. when you study artifacts (in the plain English sense -- not just strictly archeological sense) of the past, you study something which is available for re-examination. But when you study one time events (a witness account of a crime would be another example), you are not engaging in something which can be adequately examined through a peer review.
Acidification will only occur under the assumption that the CO2 is not uptaken through photosynthesis. If the temperature mildly increases and the supply of CO2 increases, wouldn't the algae population find itself in a more favorable environment?
Or at least, isn't it plausible to assume that the types of algae which do favor a warmer environment would have see their biomass increase? Changing eco system is not necessarily a "screwed up" eco system. There are cycles which depend on more than just changes of season. Has anyone studied if there is a long-term cycle of growth and contraction in the algae population? Do we know why the ice ages happen? What if warm periods cause slow increase in algae population which would uptake too much CO2 and cause global cooling (followed by slow decrease of algae population followed by release of CO2 and warming up)?
According to Al Gore Sun supplies as much energy (to the surface of the planet Earth) in 1 hour as humanity uses in 1 year. Isn't it more plausible that the natural activity (powered by the Sun) is more responsible for changes in weather patterns than the human activity. I mean, given that natural activity, according to this assertion, has 3-4 orders of magnitude more energy available to it...
Algae consumes CO2 as food (ie the essential component of photosynthesis). The fact that CO2 is released somewhere doesn't mean it's not consumed somewhere else. Just because the land-based greenery cannot increase in volume, doesn't mean that algae cannot. Warmer water with increased CO2 availability could easily produce a situation in which the algae population grows and uptakes the excess CO2. Never try to base a scientific debate on one fact. And definitely not if you learned that fact from a politician.
you need to provide proof of NOT-AGW
Actually, no. In stating a scientific conclusion, the burden of proving that all variables have been accounted for is on the one making the assertion. No, this is not proving a negative. Nothing is being proved to mathematical certainty here. In science you only reach the most plausible conclusion -- never the only possible one.
"Around the world" doesn't make it repeatable. Just because you are generalizing a context, doesn't mean that there isn't a common contributing factor that you might be ignoring. So an unaccounted-for variable being responsible for the discrepancy is still quite possible.
Only that the interpretation of the data was far fetched. That argument still stands. The "trick" that was the subject of the Climategate email was to splice 2 time series together and present them in the same context. In one of the contexts (presentation to the laymen) it was actually presented as one chart. What the conclusions of the "study" didn't mention is that one possible interpretation for discrepancy in the data is not an "error" (as they claimed) but that some of the variables in data collection were not accounted for. He was vindicated of the most brazen accusation. But the emails indicated the frame of mind of the scientists which is consistent with the accusation that they more than willing to overstate the certainty of their conclusions. What exacerbates this overstatement is their claim that peer-review is an adequate method for such fact finding. Peer review is only useful for repeatable experiments. Obviously, whether measurements are not repeatable. So peer review is wholly inadequate for this type of research. Fact finding based on non-repeatable events must be conducted through adversarial review. And that's precisely what they are trying to avoid.
No wonder I see more and more requests for Python instead of Java. Oracle's policy of feuding with everybody including their friends is making Python a more and more attractive alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
You are an idiot.
No, you. Germany is still the only country not slipping to malaise of the rest of the west. And it is precisely because it implemented the austerity measures. Oh, and did I mention that you are still an idiot?
Not if the public jobs you cut are actively hindering private activity.
But it, nonetheless, discredits the prize when a prize holder spouts such provable nonsense. I mean it's almost as if a winner of a prize in medicine started doubting existence of DNA. It would undermine the prize itself.
Nobel has lost all credibility as a prize in economics because Krugman got it. Almost any economist who made predictions which have been verified as having come true considers him a charlatan.
For example Austerity has never gotten anyone out of a recession.
Wow! That is incredibly untrue. Shrinking government spending (while deregulating private activity) caused a boom in China. It has also made Germany the only stable economy in Western Europe in the recent years. Austerity itself is a loaded word. It's not that the government has to just cut the money it spends. It has to also get out of the way. For example, cutting government expenses by shifting them to the private sector, is not going to solve anything. It will only increase regulatory costs. But cutting government expenses by cutting government involvement has been beneficial in most economies in which government had previously was TOO involved in economic activity.
So can we please stop calling neo-Marxists "Keynesian?" Keynes' theory predicted that expansion could be accomplished by government disposing of excess collections through spending. He never proposed or advocated deficit spending as a way to expand economy. Even Keynesian economics predicts that long-term deficit spending would cause a contraction.
Not really. Main cost in generation is cost of energy. And the cost of energy is controlled by cost of world-wide generation and use of natural resources. These are fungible.
At the current difficulty (you know what that means if you mine bitcoins) and the current rates of kW-hours in the US, it would take about $0.35 of electricity to generate $0.02 of bitcoins. The cost of power if the main cost of generating. There has been a steady decline in the exchange rate of bitcoins in the past month and at the same time a steady decline in the difficulty. These two are supposed to be inversely proportional. The only conclusion I reached was that the proportion of bitcoins generated with stolen cycles or stolen power is rising. Not coincidentally, there was recently a report of increasing use of botnets for bitcoin generation (that would be the increased number of stolen cycles). Apparently, people with access to electricity paid through commons are contributing to the generation of bitcoins from stolen electricity.
Pandas don't reproduce in captivity. Generally that's a good sign of depression. Laying around and being inactive all day is another sign of depression. Btw, your signature is hilarious.
The conclusions are a bit dubious. Read the comments after the article (in the link you provided). Even if the study were to be taken on its face, it wouldn't contradict the thesis that certain species of algae would increase in biomass and eventually become more dominant. They can only claim an overall decline because they measured the declining species with the weight that they had in the overall population before the decline began. But 21% of showed significant increase in biomass. So the thesis that some species are better adapted at the new conditions stands. Change does not mean annihilation. It means change. And in a warmer climate, the natural change will be the eventual increase in the biomass. Again, with time species which dedicate more calories to proliferation than to maintenance will come to dominate in warmer temperatures.
The summary is too high on hyperbole and too light on details. And there is no link to the actual article.
Well, the original question stands than. Has anyone measured the amount of biomass of algae? Trends don't have to develop at the same rate to counteract each other. The CO2 released is linear (based on the amount of energy consumed) whereas population growths tend to follow the logistic equation which behaves as an exponential equation until a certain saturation point. Exponential growths tend to start slow and have most of their gains towards the end. So if there is a slow uptrend in algae's biomass, it means it would eventually overtake the uptrend in CO2 gains. The thing is, even if there isn't such an uptrend yet, because evolutionary advantages in lower life forms appear much more quickly, there is nothing to say that one won't appear due to adaptation at some point in the future. Certainly, if pests adapt to pesticides and viruses adapt to antibiotics, it's not out of the ordinary to expect that algae would adapt to newer water conditions. And lower life forms' adaptation to higher temperature levels is almost universally higher reproductive rate (less calories needed to sustain life = more calories available for reproduction).
Probably on "computational" level though. Differential geometry can very quickly get bogged down in the proofs which need topology or differential topology. I'd say Tensor Calculus would probably contain enough of differential geometry in it to give you a start. If you want a fairly good (formal) introduction to multi-variable calculus, work your way through Spivak's "Calculus on Manifolds." Doing problems is more important than reading the book, by the way. But if you really want this to happen on your own (rather than be a pipe dream), you need to work out a study schedule which will make sure that you are not forgetting faster than you are learning. This doesn't mean learning faster. It means scheduling reviews at appropriate intervals. Something along the lines of (for each topic) study/problems for 2 days, 1 week gap, 2 days, 2 weeks gap, 1 day, 1 month gap, 1 day, 3 months gap, 1 day. Play with these as your schedule varies and as you learn more about your own ability to retain information.
Your nonsense is plausible only to a fool.
This is a political debating tool. It is certainly NOT a scientific debating tool. So why is it that the proponents of AGW believe it's ok for them to use adversarial review tactics, but insist that their opposition must submit to the peer review? Isn't such an insistence in itself an adversarial review tactic?
Ocean acidification is occurring. It's been measured.
I should have been more clear. Thank you. What I meant is that the trend of increasing acidity will only continue indefinitely if the trend of decreasing acidity (due to increased uptake of CO2 by an increasing algae population) will not counteract it.
The sun's activity has decreased over the past 30 years
While this is interesting in itself (if it's a fact, of course; I'd appreciate a quote), it has nothing to do with the point under discussion. The particular natural activity to which I was referring in the gp was the changes in algae population. Which means that here:
It is significantly less plausible that the world is warming because the sun is cooling.
you are arguing with a point which hasn't been made.
By the way, just because you have a theory which fits all the known and considered facts, doesn't mean that it's accurate. This is why reproducible testing (ie, experimentation) is necessary. It used to fit all the known facts that the world rested on the back of a giant turtle. That didn't make it a scientific theory. Because there was an experiment which could be performed to disprove it.
Like when a geologist says that the Grand Canyon was created by the Colorado river
I would assume he says it based on something other than 1 time observation of river flowing through that space. I would assume he says it based on observations of what's left there now. And observing what's left there now is very much reproducible.
when a paleontologist says that fossils were created by mineral deposits
again, the actual fossils can be examined by other paleontologists. whereas an "actual" temperature reading is as fleeting as time.
So basically you're saying that any field of study that deals with the past cannot be science.
not at all. when you study artifacts (in the plain English sense -- not just strictly archeological sense) of the past, you study something which is available for re-examination. But when you study one time events (a witness account of a crime would be another example), you are not engaging in something which can be adequately examined through a peer review.
Oh, I had no idea this was a religious debate. I thought we were having a scientific discussion.
Acidification will only occur under the assumption that the CO2 is not uptaken through photosynthesis. If the temperature mildly increases and the supply of CO2 increases, wouldn't the algae population find itself in a more favorable environment?
Or at least, isn't it plausible to assume that the types of algae which do favor a warmer environment would have see their biomass increase? Changing eco system is not necessarily a "screwed up" eco system. There are cycles which depend on more than just changes of season. Has anyone studied if there is a long-term cycle of growth and contraction in the algae population? Do we know why the ice ages happen? What if warm periods cause slow increase in algae population which would uptake too much CO2 and cause global cooling (followed by slow decrease of algae population followed by release of CO2 and warming up)?
According to Al Gore Sun supplies as much energy (to the surface of the planet Earth) in 1 hour as humanity uses in 1 year. Isn't it more plausible that the natural activity (powered by the Sun) is more responsible for changes in weather patterns than the human activity. I mean, given that natural activity, according to this assertion, has 3-4 orders of magnitude more energy available to it...
And why wouldn't increase in CO2 and temperatures cause an increase in algae population (which would then uptake the excess CO2)?
2:Humans emit a LOT of CO2
Algae consumes CO2 as food (ie the essential component of photosynthesis). The fact that CO2 is released somewhere doesn't mean it's not consumed somewhere else. Just because the land-based greenery cannot increase in volume, doesn't mean that algae cannot. Warmer water with increased CO2 availability could easily produce a situation in which the algae population grows and uptakes the excess CO2. Never try to base a scientific debate on one fact. And definitely not if you learned that fact from a politician.
you need to provide proof of NOT-AGW
Actually, no. In stating a scientific conclusion, the burden of proving that all variables have been accounted for is on the one making the assertion. No, this is not proving a negative. Nothing is being proved to mathematical certainty here. In science you only reach the most plausible conclusion -- never the only possible one.
"Around the world" doesn't make it repeatable. Just because you are generalizing a context, doesn't mean that there isn't a common contributing factor that you might be ignoring. So an unaccounted-for variable being responsible for the discrepancy is still quite possible.
Only that the interpretation of the data was far fetched. That argument still stands. The "trick" that was the subject of the Climategate email was to splice 2 time series together and present them in the same context. In one of the contexts (presentation to the laymen) it was actually presented as one chart. What the conclusions of the "study" didn't mention is that one possible interpretation for discrepancy in the data is not an "error" (as they claimed) but that some of the variables in data collection were not accounted for. He was vindicated of the most brazen accusation. But the emails indicated the frame of mind of the scientists which is consistent with the accusation that they more than willing to overstate the certainty of their conclusions. What exacerbates this overstatement is their claim that peer-review is an adequate method for such fact finding. Peer review is only useful for repeatable experiments. Obviously, whether measurements are not repeatable. So peer review is wholly inadequate for this type of research. Fact finding based on non-repeatable events must be conducted through adversarial review. And that's precisely what they are trying to avoid.
No wonder I see more and more requests for Python instead of Java. Oracle's policy of feuding with everybody including their friends is making Python a more and more attractive alternative.