Just because there are billions of dollars to be made, doesn't at all mean the climate scientists are the ones to pocket any of it as part of *any* action against climate change.
Phlogiston, persisted as a theory because no competing hypothesis existed at the time could better explained the data, and the data available at the time did not contradict the theory.
Climate science today is different with many scientists going out of there way to enormous quantities of data ranging from this such as tree rings, to limestone deposits, to sun spots to ice cores to real temperature data from the ground and from satellites.
Mind you, the term "greenhouse effect" was introduced way back in the late 19th century, so the idea is hardly new. It is certainly way longer than say the intervening time between the discovery of eggs in cholesterol, and the discovery that consumption of eggs do not increase blood cholesterol levels.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Let's say you are a patient who wants a second opinion, you would do well to go to another qualified doctor rather than some quack. If you seriously doubted the opinion of the first doctor, then you could reasonably want to get new data as well, perhaps a second X-ray, or even use a different technology like a CT-scan. And what if that second opinion gave you the same answer - do you ask again and again until you get the answer you want? That kind of behaviour could get you killed.
Likewise, when you want a second opinion on climate change, who do you go to? Another climatologist obviously - ideally one who collected his own data independently from another source using different technology. Not reusing the same data.
The fact is, by far the greater majority of climatologists from many different organisations having independently collected their own data are coming to very similar conclusions.
There is no denying there is a lot of money involved. Problems of this size, affect this many people inevitably will involve this much money, HOWEVER,
1. Why ignore all the money Exxon and others in the fossil fuel industry use to fund astro-turfing and lobby groups organisations? Exxon can influence government allocation of public funds with well funded lobby groups, but climate scientists have no such influence.
2. What evidence do you have to suggest climate scientists are beneficiaries of engineering projects to mitigate climate change? Are you suggesting climate scientists receive donations from green companies? Where is the evidence? What reason would a climate scientist have to offer advice to increase the funding of these green companies?
"Almost everything we do, from eating, to breathing, breeding, and working has a carbon footprint."
No it doesn't. It means you either don't actually understand the cause of climate change and the solutions required to prevent it or are deliberately trying to obfuscate the issue and engage in scaremongering.
'breathing' for instance adds carbon dioxide to the air, but don't forget that the carbon in this case, when you follow it to its source, comes from plants which in turn get their carbon from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So examples such as these that you cite do not increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere simply because that carbon came from the atmosphere in the recent past in the first place - in other words, those activities are carbon neutral.
The government *only* has to deal with preventing the release of carbon from ancient underground fossil fuels. The attempt at micromanaging the economy with all manner of carbon trading and carbon credits is a grab for power for sure.
Definitely governments are going about this wrong and it's up to us normal people who climate change would affect the most to demand not only that governments fix the problem, but fix it in a precise manner that penalises polluters - not the average citizen.
For instance, if the only thing the government did was tax the release of old carbon into the atmosphere to a point where the second best technology is viable, then we're on track to solving the problem.
For some people the extra revenue raised could be used to cut other taxes. For others, it might mean temporarily spending it to provide more efficient alternatives. Whether you are for small or big government, a carbon tax isn't such a bad idea.
Corals grow within very narrow limits of temperature, irradiance, salinity, pH and turbidity; all variables which are influenced by climate and weather. More CO2 means more acidic ocean water, which would retard coral growth. Warmer oceans would also reduce carbonate ion saturation, having the same effect.
One thing that's always absent from these libertarian type arguments is that that many costs are socialised without government intervention.
Someone dumps their waste into the river: that's a socialised cost. Everyone chooses to drive to work and clogs up all the roads and increases air population: that's a socialised cost. People smoke in the workplace, giving others a dose of second hand smoke and increases premiums on the building insurance: that's a socialised cost. Speeding drivers putting innocent drivers, passengers and pedestrians at risk: that's a socialised cost. When someone gets misses work because for health reasons: that's also a socialised cost.
All of these happen *without* government intervention.
So let me put the argument in libertarian terms. When all these people are socialising their costs onto me, they are impinging on my freedom and I expect that the government do something about it.
"We need mandatory exercise programs and diets - because that is the only known way to make sure people stay at a healthy weight. And we'll need to pay for oversight and enforcement of those programs"
No we don't. You've changed the question from how do we make sure *most* people stay at a healthy weight to how do we make sure *everyone* stays at a healthy weight.
The law of diminishing returns is a well known economic concept, and your example of mandatory activities is an example of diminished returns.
It is where initial steps that are taken to address a problem give huge gains, but each additional step taken gives smaller and smaller gains until eventually it is no longer economically viable to go further.
Your example is not a valid way of 'managing costs' as you put it. We are at the stage where taking small measures produces large gains. And your example is an invalid slippery slope argument because it assumes we need to and will take these measures to the extreme without explaining how each step of the slope is inevitable.
This would not be a problem if a ribbon search function were also included. If typing in a ribbon search box revealed a list of command items, which if clicked reveals the location of the icon picture then describing how to get to a command would be no problem at all.
It's not like scientists don't go about trying to find evidence to the contrary (for example non-uniformitarianism). It's simply that evidence to the contrary in many such cases fail arise despite best efforts to find it. When this is the case, rejecting such things that lack evidence simply pays dividends.
When theories with close to 100% certainty are used as the basis for further research, engineering problems and policy decisions yielding tremendous results, there is a genuine economic case for assuming those theories are true regardless of your personal opinion on the matter.
The article needs to make a better case for why wave is more complicated.
Myself, I find the status quo hugely complicated: Switching between various native and web applications with different log-ins, hugely different ways of doing things and no easy way to search and aggregate all the information or transition between them.
I don't twitter, facebook, wiki or blog much because of the amount of effort to partipate in all of them and 'context switching' between them. It's simply to complicated.
If wave brings all these different things together under a consistent workflow, that is simplifying things greatly.
Maybe the article should not claim that DRM is an impossible business model, but rather claim that DRM is bad for the economy because it reduces the total value of the economy and therefore should not be allowed despite the fact that it is possible to make a business model out of it.
When there is no ban...EVERYONE has a choice of whether to go there as a patron, or an employee. No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them in the door to stay.
With smoking bans....there is no choice.
Your glorification of choice is overrated.
More choice means being burdened with making choices. Sometimes choices are genuinely liberating, but other times I find choices are limiting.
Personally I don't want to be forced to choose not to eat at a smoke filled restaurant, or forced to choose not to work in a smoked filled environment. Choices like these are a distraction when I could be spending my time making more fulfilling choices.
If the government didn't set food safety standards for restaurants, for instance, I would have to decide whether it is safe to eat at any of them. Whether the decision was based on hearsay, research or avoidance, there is a risk/effort/opportunity trade-off for me making the choice.
This brings me to the core argument: Choices impose a cost on the individual making it.
Only when the benefits of being presented the choice exceeds the cost of making it, is it worthwhile to have the choice presented in the first place.
I am not interested in denying a smoker's decision to continue their habit, but I will resent it if I am burdened with theses choices for the rest of my life.
According the Wikipedia article on the Black hole information paradox, information cannot be destroyed. What does this actually mean? Is this in any way related to the Laws of Thermodynamics? Does it mean information is neither created nor lost - ever?
A "weak" free will, or a relatively underdeveloped Frontal lobe.
Quote: The so-called executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events.
Different people will respond differently to the same cancer, but that doesn't necessarily make "will" any more "free".
Environmentalism is very much for science because without foundation on ecology it is nothing. What people sometimes fail to understand is that environmentalism is also about ethics (Christians don't have a monopoly on ethics by the way). For example, the ethics of environmentalism requires that environmentalists oppose decisions made with humans as the central concern. This is in no way anti-human - it is experience that when decisions are made solely for the benefit of humans at the expense of everything else, those decisions will produce so much damage that they will eventually come back to bite us. Actions have consequences.
With GM foods it includes for example the risk that pesticide resistance will be introduced in crops, thereby increasing the use of pesticides. For nuclear power, the problem is legacy of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear waste. There may or may not be valid reasons to oppose nanotechnology, and for the moment I have no opinion on the matter. Whether or not I support nanotechnology may well depend on the sorts of applications it is used for in the same way that I support GM medicines but oppose GM foods.
Also I wouldn't be so quick to say "so quick to limit the quality of life of the majority of the human race". Under our current socio-economic order most of the time such research benefits only a tiny minority of the human race, so the claim is hugely exaggerated.
It only affects people who would use the Java source code itself.
I imagine it will affect fewer people than that. If Sun retains the copyrights to the code and existing licensees do not wish to publish their source code under GPL, Sun can continue to license the source code to them under different terms for a fee. For those licensees, the arrangement wouldn't be any different to how it is now.
If I feel uninformed, or if I dislike my choices, I would still go to the polling booth and make an informal vote (a vote that was accidently or intentionally entered incorrectly and rendered invalid). That way I will still be counted as having attempted a vote showing that I care and that my votes in the future are up for grabs to whoever can inform me properly and convince me that they deserve my vote.
But seeing how dodgy some elections are in the US, I'd be careful when attempting to lodge an informal vote in case it gets counted to a particular candidate due to some obscene process. I would also be upset if I were presented with electronic voting that doesn't allow me to cast an informal vote.
Slashdot Mirror
"when there are billions of dollars riding on cap & trade and the whole green industry behind it"
Funny. I could have sworn, I read something about a leading climate scientist opposing cap and trade in his fight against global warming.
http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/12/worlds-leading-global-warming-crusader.html
Just because there are billions of dollars to be made, doesn't at all mean the climate scientists are the ones to pocket any of it as part of *any* action against climate change.
Phlogiston, persisted as a theory because no competing hypothesis existed at the time could better explained the data, and the data available at the time did not contradict the theory.
Climate science today is different with many scientists going out of there way to enormous quantities of data ranging from this such as tree rings, to limestone deposits, to sun spots to ice cores to real temperature data from the ground and from satellites.
Mind you, the term "greenhouse effect" was introduced way back in the late 19th century, so the idea is hardly new. It is certainly way longer than say the intervening time between the discovery of eggs in cholesterol, and the discovery that consumption of eggs do not increase blood cholesterol levels.
To equate climate change to phlogiston or egg cholesterol is a long stretch indeed.
Let's say you are a patient who wants a second opinion, you would do well to go to another qualified doctor rather than some quack. If you seriously doubted the opinion of the first doctor, then you could reasonably want to get new data as well, perhaps a second X-ray, or even use a different technology like a CT-scan. And what if that second opinion gave you the same answer - do you ask again and again until you get the answer you want? That kind of behaviour could get you killed.
Likewise, when you want a second opinion on climate change, who do you go to? Another climatologist obviously - ideally one who collected his own data independently from another source using different technology. Not reusing the same data.
The fact is, by far the greater majority of climatologists from many different organisations having independently collected their own data are coming to very similar conclusions.
That is something you can't ignore.
"Hollywood once again demonstrates its close ties to Washington DC"
should be
"Washington DC once again demonstrates its close ties to Hollywood"
It's your political system that's broken - not Hollywood.
"What the U.S. gets of of the relationship is a more or less stable Middle East."
And why would they want that?
Might I add that in many parts of the world the fossil industry receives way more government money than the alternative industry.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/02/2759398.htm
The first step in climate tackling change is to simply end those subsidies. Why shouldn't we at least ask for that?
There is no denying there is a lot of money involved. Problems of this size, affect this many people inevitably will involve this much money, HOWEVER,
1. Why ignore all the money Exxon and others in the fossil fuel industry use to fund astro-turfing and lobby groups organisations? Exxon can influence government allocation of public funds with well funded lobby groups, but climate scientists have no such influence.
2. What evidence do you have to suggest climate scientists are beneficiaries of engineering projects to mitigate climate change? Are you suggesting climate scientists receive donations from green companies? Where is the evidence? What reason would a climate scientist have to offer advice to increase the funding of these green companies?
"Almost everything we do, from eating, to breathing, breeding, and working has a carbon footprint."
No it doesn't. It means you either don't actually understand the cause of climate change and the solutions required to prevent it or are deliberately trying to obfuscate the issue and engage in scaremongering.
'breathing' for instance adds carbon dioxide to the air, but don't forget that the carbon in this case, when you follow it to its source, comes from plants which in turn get their carbon from the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So examples such as these that you cite do not increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere simply because that carbon came from the atmosphere in the recent past in the first place - in other words, those activities are carbon neutral.
The government *only* has to deal with preventing the release of carbon from ancient underground fossil fuels. The attempt at micromanaging the economy with all manner of carbon trading and carbon credits is a grab for power for sure.
Definitely governments are going about this wrong and it's up to us normal people who climate change would affect the most to demand not only that governments fix the problem, but fix it in a precise manner that penalises polluters - not the average citizen.
For instance, if the only thing the government did was tax the release of old carbon into the atmosphere to a point where the second best technology is viable, then we're on track to solving the problem.
For some people the extra revenue raised could be used to cut other taxes. For others, it might mean temporarily spending it to provide more efficient alternatives. Whether you are for small or big government, a carbon tax isn't such a bad idea.
Corals grow within very narrow limits of temperature, irradiance, salinity, pH and turbidity; all variables which are influenced by climate and weather. More CO2 means more acidic ocean water, which would retard coral growth. Warmer oceans would also reduce carbonate ion saturation, having the same effect.
One thing that's always absent from these libertarian type arguments is that that many costs are socialised without government intervention.
Someone dumps their waste into the river: that's a socialised cost. Everyone chooses to drive to work and clogs up all the roads and increases air population: that's a socialised cost. People smoke in the workplace, giving others a dose of second hand smoke and increases premiums on the building insurance: that's a socialised cost. Speeding drivers putting innocent drivers, passengers and pedestrians at risk: that's a socialised cost. When someone gets misses work because for health reasons: that's also a socialised cost.
All of these happen *without* government intervention.
So let me put the argument in libertarian terms. When all these people are socialising their costs onto me, they are impinging on my freedom and I expect that the government do something about it.
"We need mandatory exercise programs and diets - because that is the only known way to make sure people stay at a healthy weight. And we'll need to pay for oversight and enforcement of those programs"
No we don't. You've changed the question from how do we make sure *most* people stay at a healthy weight to how do we make sure *everyone* stays at a healthy weight.
The law of diminishing returns is a well known economic concept, and your example of mandatory activities is an example of diminished returns.
It is where initial steps that are taken to address a problem give huge gains, but each additional step taken gives smaller and smaller gains until eventually it is no longer economically viable to go further.
Your example is not a valid way of 'managing costs' as you put it. We are at the stage where taking small measures produces large gains. And your example is an invalid slippery slope argument because it assumes we need to and will take these measures to the extreme without explaining how each step of the slope is inevitable.
If there were a command search, finding the correct command in a menu or ribbon would be just as easy.
This would not be a problem if a ribbon search function were also included. If typing in a ribbon search box revealed a list of command items, which if clicked reveals the location of the icon picture then describing how to get to a command would be no problem at all.
It's not faith. It's economics.
It's not like scientists don't go about trying to find evidence to the contrary (for example non-uniformitarianism). It's simply that evidence to the contrary in many such cases fail arise despite best efforts to find it. When this is the case, rejecting such things that lack evidence simply pays dividends.
When theories with close to 100% certainty are used as the basis for further research, engineering problems and policy decisions yielding tremendous results, there is a genuine economic case for assuming those theories are true regardless of your personal opinion on the matter.
The article needs to make a better case for why wave is more complicated.
Myself, I find the status quo hugely complicated:
Switching between various native and web applications with different log-ins, hugely different ways of doing things and no easy way to search and aggregate all the information or transition between them.
I don't twitter, facebook, wiki or blog much because of the amount of effort to partipate in all of them and 'context switching' between them. It's simply to complicated.
If wave brings all these different things together under a consistent workflow, that is simplifying things greatly.
Maybe the article should not claim that DRM is an impossible business model, but rather claim that DRM is bad for the economy because it reduces the total value of the economy and therefore should not be allowed despite the fact that it is possible to make a business model out of it.
Your glorification of choice is overrated.
More choice means being burdened with making choices. Sometimes choices are genuinely liberating, but other times I find choices are limiting.
Personally I don't want to be forced to choose not to eat at a smoke filled restaurant, or forced to choose not to work in a smoked filled environment. Choices like these are a distraction when I could be spending my time making more fulfilling choices.
If the government didn't set food safety standards for restaurants, for instance, I would have to decide whether it is safe to eat at any of them. Whether the decision was based on hearsay, research or avoidance, there is a risk/effort/opportunity trade-off for me making the choice.
This brings me to the core argument: Choices impose a cost on the individual making it.
Only when the benefits of being presented the choice exceeds the cost of making it, is it worthwhile to have the choice presented in the first place.
I am not interested in denying a smoker's decision to continue their habit, but I will resent it if I am burdened with theses choices for the rest of my life.
Should the principle of freedom of choice extend to the disabled people taking their dollars elsewhere?
Freedom of choice indeed.
Why not build and promote a more democratic medium where money can't buy influence?
According the Wikipedia article on the Black hole information paradox, information cannot be destroyed. What does this actually mean? Is this in any way related to the Laws of Thermodynamics? Does it mean information is neither created nor lost - ever?
Different people will respond differently to the same cancer, but that doesn't necessarily make "will" any more "free".
Environmentalism is very much for science because without foundation on ecology it is nothing. What people sometimes fail to understand is that environmentalism is also about ethics (Christians don't have a monopoly on ethics by the way). For example, the ethics of environmentalism requires that environmentalists oppose decisions made with humans as the central concern. This is in no way anti-human - it is experience that when decisions are made solely for the benefit of humans at the expense of everything else, those decisions will produce so much damage that they will eventually come back to bite us. Actions have consequences. With GM foods it includes for example the risk that pesticide resistance will be introduced in crops, thereby increasing the use of pesticides. For nuclear power, the problem is legacy of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear waste. There may or may not be valid reasons to oppose nanotechnology, and for the moment I have no opinion on the matter. Whether or not I support nanotechnology may well depend on the sorts of applications it is used for in the same way that I support GM medicines but oppose GM foods. Also I wouldn't be so quick to say "so quick to limit the quality of life of the majority of the human race". Under our current socio-economic order most of the time such research benefits only a tiny minority of the human race, so the claim is hugely exaggerated.
It only affects people who would use the Java source code itself.
I imagine it will affect fewer people than that. If Sun retains the copyrights to the code and existing licensees do not wish to publish their source code under GPL, Sun can continue to license the source code to them under different terms for a fee. For those licensees, the arrangement wouldn't be any different to how it is now.
This is very much a good thing for Sun.
But seeing how dodgy some elections are in the US, I'd be careful when attempting to lodge an informal vote in case it gets counted to a particular candidate due to some obscene process. I would also be upset if I were presented with electronic voting that doesn't allow me to cast an informal vote.
how a "First Amendment lawsuit" is relevant. As I understand, the First Amendment only restricts the government.