Black lists have been abused for/ever/. That is why they are often banned outright. The problem is that people do the most horrible things when they think they are on the right side of some moral cause. Gee, it took no time before political groups were on the Australian internet black-list.
The argument over internet regulation is not really about porn in schools and libraries. It is in the minds of some. But those people don't realise that they will never stop tenacious and curious children who will seek out areas of little adult supervision. What are you going to do? Put anti-porn surveillance behind the eyeballs of every child?
The defenders of internet neutrality raise very important points that cut to the core of the real workings of the internet. The defenders of "moral values" are living in a fantasy land.
lol! Yes, the gays are oppressing the straights! Or perhaps you don't know what the F&S*K is going on. ICANN is considering proposals from others! Nah, it must be that the gays are oppressing the straights!!!! OUTRAGE!!!!
Acting "against immorality" - no matter how pointless and ineffectual - conveys the impression that they actually care about their purported principles.
Most of those politicians really/do/ care about those moral issues. It is how they frame themselves as the good guy. Hard to believe, unless you are actually heavily involved in religion -- at which point, you think "duh, they must be that way". I think the original Augustus Caesar is the canonical example.
Call who in particular. Tell me which professors you are talking about, and I will get in touch with them.
Google is the perfect friend of the cognitive bubble. You know what that is, right? Well, let's put this to the test. Let's find out who these professors are, what they really believe, and why.
You know how those office doors have jokes on them? 3 of the doors had the math behind the IPCC model with snide comments and exclamation marks. If you think their math is valid I don't think you've sought professional guidance there.
Sounds like bullshit to me. These mathematicians could advance their careers by publishing -- something that academics are under pressure to do.
Follow the money.
Indeed. Follow the money. But really, you just gotta know what a cognitive bubble is to understand how "skeptics" can firewall themselves from their elementary mistakes.
I think the fact that the previous record was set in 1936 pretty much disproves your "fact" that the weather is setting records "year after year". "Year after year" to most people means "every year or two", not "every 7 decades or so".
This argument is pretty vacuous, since you are talking about a single record. A single point does not a trend make or disprove.
Each year we have cold records broken, and warm records broken. There are 1000s of records that are being tracked. We are breaking warm records twice as often as cold records. Scientists predict that that ratio will increase, based on a physical understanding of the world that has undergone sustained and deep statistical analysis.
But by all means, believe what you want. A single data point.
Between then and now, States have had record cold temperatures as well.
That's why you want to look at the rate of record highs to record lows. There is a field that works out how to understand if we are looking at trends or outliers. It is called statistics.
I agree that it matters a lot, and I like the fact that Palin managed to say something true; however, the GPs point still stands. It is very difficult to quantify the relative importance of ideological mistakes. (I don't like the term lying, since I do not believe that people know when they are lying for the most part.)
In this case, I think politifact was dead on, in getting the context correct. There are a lot of people getting food-stamps. This has many pernicious effects -- not least subsidising businesses who pay minimum wage. Think about it: if the food-stamps didn't exist, then those families would have to: starve, steal, demand more income. Since the food-stamps do exist, McDonalds can pay $6 per hour, and a family can barely get by on that.
This is just another example of complex regulations creating bizarre local minima in the economy. I believe that with regulation, less is more -- however, if I could borrow a metaphor from physics -- "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein. This last point is something that movement conservatives completely don't get.
Getting back to the GPs point -- if I told 10 truths (say about my taxable income), and then lied about how much time I spent on slashdot, is that the same truthiness as someone who told 10 truths (say about how much time they spent on slashdot), and then lied to the IRS? Obviously not. The size of the lie matters, and that means measuring context as well.
It would be nice if there were a running tally on each politician for how many times they distorted or lied about something
Well, there is!
Stride on over to politifact, which gives the claims, rates them (true ==> pants-on-fire), and gives a referenced analysis why. They even analyse internet chain letters and other such claptrap.
fact-checks are cross-referenced to the person who made the claim, so you can see, for example, the truthiness of Obama, and Romney, or, if you prefer bat-shit-insane, Palin, and Bachmann.
It's not cool at all; however, Sagan overreacted, and deserves to be laughed at for such. Even great men are not perfect. Sagan is my personal hero, and this episode humanises him to me.
Actually no, the "climatologists" warned in flood years there would be more flooding, in strong hurricane year there would be more hurricanes, after a blizzard that blizzards would be more severe (nevermind the records were set over 40 years ago) etc,
They warned of all of those things decades ago. They are all trending upwards. Now scientists say "told you so".
If warmer air holds more water, then there will be more precipitation, Plants grow BIG in a well watered hot house.
Your ad-hoc analysis of precipitation is truly stupendous. Write a paper, and collect a noble prize. If you pass Go, collect $200.
but the USGS didn't factor in the Methane releases and Methane is a more effective Green House Gas then CO2 ever was.
This is true, and the amount of methane in permafrost and on the ocean floor is stupendous; however, CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for 1000s of years. Methane is more like 2-5 years.
Sadly, critics of Lomborg never seem to engage directly with his arguments.
That is not true. There are many wide-ranging opinions on what to do about climate change, and Lomborg's voice is represented by those who see current renewable technologies as immature.
The reason why most scientifically minded people don't bother with Lomborg, is that he was found guilty of fabricating data, plagiarism, and selective sourcing. In academic circles, his reputation is shot. He was investigated, found guilty, but then investigated again, the ruling overturned. It is an interesting story in academic fraud versus academic freedom. But that fact that Lomborg's seminal work contains egregious errors is no secret.
But the cheap and dirty solution is always going to be cheaper than the economically responsible and affordable solution.
That would be depressing if it were true. But coal will become more expensive than wind in about 5 years. And we have every reason to expect that it will soon be more expensive than solar, but that will take longer.
Sure we need base-load power as well; however, there are many possiblesolutions in the works for that too.
I believe that conservatives are rightly suspicious of environmental paranoia; however, the suspicion goes too far. AGW is a real and present danger to our civilization, as the science clearly demonstrates. Also, the economics of addressing climate change really aren't that bad. Germany has been doing it, and they managed to grow their economy 3% p.a., during a global recession. Cap-and-trade has been shown to have a negligible (if any) impact on the economy, and it does reduce emissions. In short, conservatives are guilty of economic alarmism.
But I also believe that we would have been ill-served by rolling out massive wind/solar installations in the 80s/90s. (We had consensus in the scientific community in 1979, according to a NAS report from that year.) The technology was too immature. The system of grants and subsidies has helped move these technologies along tremendously, and they are almost ready for prime-time. We are less then a decade from a major shift in energy policy.
With the benefit of hindsight, I believe that we would have been best served by a carbon tax that went directly into technology R&D project, small-scale installations, and subsidies for quality energy efficient housing. It is difficult to know if this would have sped the development of technology, since society has already invested heavily in such projects. However, it would have prevented the misallocation of resources by those who -- for ideological reasons -- believe that the fossil-fuel party will last forever.
Now, wake me up when the AGW loons decide that nuclear is better than coal, and I'll start taking them seriously.
Since you already have the solutions, you may have missed the fact that wind-power is just about to become cheaper than coal. And that's when we/don't/ factor in coal subsidies, which/includes/ treating the atmosphere as a free garbage dump.
It'll only be 5 years or so.
Would that make a difference to your fantasy-land? Or do you believe that we should let coal pollute for free, get additional government subsidies, and then only be replaced by nuclear, because only liberals like wind. Well??
But Bush-the-Elder's friends? Now that carries some weight!
That would sound reasonable, but alas, that is not how the cognitive bubble works. It will be more like this:
"Global warming isn't happening"
"Okay, global warming is happening but it isn't very much"
"Okay, there will be significant warming, but it is natural"
"Okay, it's man-made, but it will be good for us"
"Okay, it isn't good fun, this global warming, so it must be God's punishment for homosexuals"
Yes, indeed, expect Muller's BEST to have no practical effect on the cognitive bubble. That is why it is called denial.
If history has any lessons, it is that we will literally have to wait until the deniers die of old age before their "discourse" disappears into history.
Yes, there are some areas that may be seriously screwed (like Bangladesh, IIRC), but honestly it'll mostly be business as usual in the USA.
2m will not be business as usual. Some areas will have to be abandoned. But sea level doesn't rise evenly (because of gravity -- look it up). The east cost of the USA will be worst affected by the distribution of sea-level rise, and it could be 5-7m. In 100 years, we may be relocating half of New York City.
nonsense, crop yield depends on the cyclical phenomenon known as *drought*
Climatologists are long warned that the USA will become increasingly arid with global warming. Starting in South-West California and extending west into the wheat-belt and eventually to the great lakes.
Climate systems will also become more "stuck", meaning that we will have weeks/months without rain, and then flooding, and then warmth for a month, and then frost. This ill mean serious changes to the way was do agriculture.
And then there's the fact that warm air holds more water, and that means storms on steroids. Bigger storms mean larger insurance premiums.
But the pseudo-scientific "skeptics" believe that warmth means a golden age. It may mean nicer conditions in Greenland.
We need a WORKER'S revolution!!! Oh wait. This is the USA we're about. We need a CAPITALIST revolution!!! Put the top 1% in charge!!! They'll fix/EVERYTHING/.
You are right. It is not a tax per se. Still, Fred Singer led a chorus of denial that there was a problem, coupled with shrill warnings of economic disaster if anything was done about the non-problem, and a small but vocal portion of the public ate it up as if it was the truth. Singer and his cohort of oil industry funded think tank "intellectuals" were dead wrong on both the economics and the science. That was the point I was trying to make. The facts of how the regulations worked is an interesting but minor detail. The regulations did work -- at almost no net cost -- and mitigated serious environmental problems.
The fact that the same ideologues are making the same vacuous arguments against AGW, taking money from the same industries -- should be a red flag to wake up and smell what you are shovelling. It was false in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. This has all painstakingly documented by historians.
The point about CO2 being exhaled is that it is (a) a natural part of our atmosphere, (b) not only needed by plant life, but increased CO2 increases plant production rates (Plants can grow up to 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions, though this assumes no change in climate and no limitation on other nutrients), which, consequently, reduces CO2 in the atmosphere and increases oxygen needed by mammals and (c) it is abundant in our atmosphere.
Such a simple fallacy.
Water is a natural thing that every animal/plant consumes every day. An animal/plant can consume too much water. (It will die.)
It is possible for there to be too much of something.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean by censorship?
Black lists have been abused for /ever/. That is why they are often banned outright. The problem is that people do the most horrible things when they think they are on the right side of some moral cause. Gee, it took no time before political groups were on the Australian internet black-list.
The argument over internet regulation is not really about porn in schools and libraries. It is in the minds of some. But those people don't realise that they will never stop tenacious and curious children who will seek out areas of little adult supervision. What are you going to do? Put anti-porn surveillance behind the eyeballs of every child?
The defenders of internet neutrality raise very important points that cut to the core of the real workings of the internet. The defenders of "moral values" are living in a fantasy land.
Which is it? If you believe that prayer has any sort of real effect, then you are not doing a very good job of letting me be.
Ah, but the effect of prayer is on his /own/ mind -- and tacitly he understands this. Hence the importance.
lol! Yes, the gays are oppressing the straights! Or perhaps you don't know what the F&S*K is going on. ICANN is considering proposals from others! Nah, it must be that the gays are oppressing the straights!!!! OUTRAGE!!!!
Acting "against immorality" - no matter how pointless and ineffectual - conveys the impression that they actually care about their purported principles.
Most of those politicians really /do/ care about those moral issues. It is how they frame themselves as the good guy. Hard to believe, unless you are actually heavily involved in religion -- at which point, you think "duh, they must be that way". I think the original Augustus Caesar is the canonical example.
Call who in particular. Tell me which professors you are talking about, and I will get in touch with them.
Google is the perfect friend of the cognitive bubble. You know what that is, right? Well, let's put this to the test. Let's find out who these professors are, what they really believe, and why.
You know how those office doors have jokes on them? 3 of the doors had the math behind the IPCC model with snide comments and exclamation marks. If you think their math is valid I don't think you've sought professional guidance there.
Sounds like bullshit to me. These mathematicians could advance their careers by publishing -- something that academics are under pressure to do.
Follow the money.
Indeed. Follow the money. But really, you just gotta know what a cognitive bubble is to understand how "skeptics" can firewall themselves from their elementary mistakes.
I think the fact that the previous record was set in 1936 pretty much disproves your "fact" that the weather is setting records "year after year". "Year after year" to most people means "every year or two", not "every 7 decades or so".
This argument is pretty vacuous, since you are talking about a single record. A single point does not a trend make or disprove.
Each year we have cold records broken, and warm records broken. There are 1000s of records that are being tracked. We are breaking warm records twice as often as cold records. Scientists predict that that ratio will increase, based on a physical understanding of the world that has undergone sustained and deep statistical analysis.
But by all means, believe what you want. A single data point.
Between then and now, States have had record cold temperatures as well.
That's why you want to look at the rate of record highs to record lows. There is a field that works out how to understand if we are looking at trends or outliers. It is called statistics.
I agree that it matters a lot, and I like the fact that Palin managed to say something true; however, the GPs point still stands. It is very difficult to quantify the relative importance of ideological mistakes. (I don't like the term lying, since I do not believe that people know when they are lying for the most part.)
In this case, I think politifact was dead on, in getting the context correct. There are a lot of people getting food-stamps. This has many pernicious effects -- not least subsidising businesses who pay minimum wage. Think about it: if the food-stamps didn't exist, then those families would have to: starve, steal, demand more income. Since the food-stamps do exist, McDonalds can pay $6 per hour, and a family can barely get by on that.
This is just another example of complex regulations creating bizarre local minima in the economy. I believe that with regulation, less is more -- however, if I could borrow a metaphor from physics -- "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein. This last point is something that movement conservatives completely don't get.
Getting back to the GPs point -- if I told 10 truths (say about my taxable income), and then lied about how much time I spent on slashdot, is that the same truthiness as someone who told 10 truths (say about how much time they spent on slashdot), and then lied to the IRS? Obviously not. The size of the lie matters, and that means measuring context as well.
It would be nice if there were a running tally on each politician for how many times they distorted or lied about something
Well, there is!
Stride on over to politifact, which gives the claims, rates them (true ==> pants-on-fire), and gives a referenced analysis why. They even analyse internet chain letters and other such claptrap.
fact-checks are cross-referenced to the person who made the claim, so you can see, for example, the truthiness of Obama, and Romney, or, if you prefer bat-shit-insane, Palin, and Bachmann.
It's not cool at all; however, Sagan overreacted, and deserves to be laughed at for such. Even great men are not perfect. Sagan is my personal hero, and this episode humanises him to me.
Rock Star!
They make fun of creationists but don't notice that this stuff is no different. Arrogant, libtards most of em.
Psychologists call that projection. It is one of the key ego defence mechanisms, and is present surprisingly often in politically motivated speech, due to the cognitive bubble.
Somebody is being an arrogant %&*#-tard. It must be the 1000s of scientists of all political persuasions, who have dedicated their lives to what Karl Rove pejoratively referred to as the reality based community.
Of course you have the "truth", and your mind is firewalled to uncomfortable ideas.
Actually no, the "climatologists" warned in flood years there would be more flooding, in strong hurricane year there would be more hurricanes, after a blizzard that blizzards would be more severe (nevermind the records were set over 40 years ago) etc,
They warned of all of those things decades ago. They are all trending upwards. Now scientists say "told you so".
If warmer air holds more water, then there will be more precipitation, Plants grow BIG in a well watered hot house.
Your ad-hoc analysis of precipitation is truly stupendous. Write a paper, and collect a noble prize. If you pass Go, collect $200.
Anyone not understanding what an exponential
Anyone not understanding what an exponential is should NOT be making policy decisions at all. Period.
A very sad fact.
but the USGS didn't factor in the Methane releases and Methane is a more effective Green House Gas then CO2 ever was.
This is true, and the amount of methane in permafrost and on the ocean floor is stupendous; however, CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for 1000s of years. Methane is more like 2-5 years.
Sadly, critics of Lomborg never seem to engage directly with his arguments.
That is not true. There are many wide-ranging opinions on what to do about climate change, and Lomborg's voice is represented by those who see current renewable technologies as immature.
The reason why most scientifically minded people don't bother with Lomborg, is that he was found guilty of fabricating data, plagiarism, and selective sourcing. In academic circles, his reputation is shot. He was investigated, found guilty, but then investigated again, the ruling overturned. It is an interesting story in academic fraud versus academic freedom. But that fact that Lomborg's seminal work contains egregious errors is no secret.
But the cheap and dirty solution is always going to be cheaper than the economically responsible and affordable solution.
That would be depressing if it were true. But coal will become more expensive than wind in about 5 years. And we have every reason to expect that it will soon be more expensive than solar, but that will take longer.
Sure we need base-load power as well; however, there are many possible solutions in the works for that too.
I believe that conservatives are rightly suspicious of environmental paranoia; however, the suspicion goes too far. AGW is a real and present danger to our civilization, as the science clearly demonstrates. Also, the economics of addressing climate change really aren't that bad. Germany has been doing it, and they managed to grow their economy 3% p.a., during a global recession. Cap-and-trade has been shown to have a negligible (if any) impact on the economy, and it does reduce emissions. In short, conservatives are guilty of economic alarmism.
But I also believe that we would have been ill-served by rolling out massive wind/solar installations in the 80s/90s. (We had consensus in the scientific community in 1979, according to a NAS report from that year.) The technology was too immature. The system of grants and subsidies has helped move these technologies along tremendously, and they are almost ready for prime-time. We are less then a decade from a major shift in energy policy.
With the benefit of hindsight, I believe that we would have been best served by a carbon tax that went directly into technology R&D project, small-scale installations, and subsidies for quality energy efficient housing. It is difficult to know if this would have sped the development of technology, since society has already invested heavily in such projects. However, it would have prevented the misallocation of resources by those who -- for ideological reasons -- believe that the fossil-fuel party will last forever.
Now, wake me up when the AGW loons decide that nuclear is better than coal, and I'll start taking them seriously.
Since you already have the solutions, you may have missed the fact that wind-power is just about to become cheaper than coal. And that's when we /don't/ factor in coal subsidies, which /includes/ treating the atmosphere as a free garbage dump.
It'll only be 5 years or so.
Would that make a difference to your fantasy-land? Or do you believe that we should let coal pollute for free, get additional government subsidies, and then only be replaced by nuclear, because only liberals like wind. Well??
But Bush-the-Elder's friends? Now that carries some weight!
That would sound reasonable, but alas, that is not how the cognitive bubble works. It will be more like this:
Yes, indeed, expect Muller's BEST to have no practical effect on the cognitive bubble. That is why it is called denial.
If history has any lessons, it is that we will literally have to wait until the deniers die of old age before their "discourse" disappears into history.
Yes, there are some areas that may be seriously screwed (like Bangladesh, IIRC), but honestly it'll mostly be business as usual in the USA.
2m will not be business as usual. Some areas will have to be abandoned. But sea level doesn't rise evenly (because of gravity -- look it up). The east cost of the USA will be worst affected by the distribution of sea-level rise, and it could be 5-7m. In 100 years, we may be relocating half of New York City.
nonsense, crop yield depends on the cyclical phenomenon known as *drought*
Climatologists are long warned that the USA will become increasingly arid with global warming. Starting in South-West California and extending west into the wheat-belt and eventually to the great lakes.
Climate systems will also become more "stuck", meaning that we will have weeks/months without rain, and then flooding, and then warmth for a month, and then frost. This ill mean serious changes to the way was do agriculture.
And then there's the fact that warm air holds more water, and that means storms on steroids. Bigger storms mean larger insurance premiums.
But the pseudo-scientific "skeptics" believe that warmth means a golden age. It may mean nicer conditions in Greenland.
yay greenland.
We need a WORKER'S revolution!!! Oh wait. This is the USA we're about. We need a CAPITALIST revolution!!! Put the top 1% in charge!!! They'll fix /EVERYTHING/.
You are right. It is not a tax per se. Still, Fred Singer led a chorus of denial that there was a problem, coupled with shrill warnings of economic disaster if anything was done about the non-problem, and a small but vocal portion of the public ate it up as if it was the truth. Singer and his cohort of oil industry funded think tank "intellectuals" were dead wrong on both the economics and the science. That was the point I was trying to make. The facts of how the regulations worked is an interesting but minor detail. The regulations did work -- at almost no net cost -- and mitigated serious environmental problems.
The fact that the same ideologues are making the same vacuous arguments against AGW, taking money from the same industries -- should be a red flag to wake up and smell what you are shovelling. It was false in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. This has all painstakingly documented by historians.
The point about CO2 being exhaled is that it is (a) a natural part of our atmosphere, (b) not only needed by plant life, but increased CO2 increases plant production rates (Plants can grow up to 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions, though this assumes no change in climate and no limitation on other nutrients), which, consequently, reduces CO2 in the atmosphere and increases oxygen needed by mammals and (c) it is abundant in our atmosphere.
Such a simple fallacy.
Water is a natural thing that every animal/plant consumes every day. An animal/plant can consume too much water. (It will die.)
It is possible for there to be too much of something.