Let me rephrase that: Global warming as enunciated by media popularizers is untestable.
Possibly. Is there only a single such theory? Who cares what the popularisers say?
The best evidence that it exists is melting of long-term ice in different parts of the world.
... and the rising global temperatures, and the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and there are probably a few other indicators as well.
But as a theory, in which you can predict specific weather changes when you feed it new observational data and then turn the crank, it's a complete failure.
They are climate models, not weather models, so that they don't work so well for weather prediction is no surprise. Good thing nobody is claiming that then, eh?
I really don't understand this urge to prosecute him. Why isn't this treated like an airplane accident, where only in extreme cases the pilots are prosecuted? Yes, the man may have made a mistake. Missed a sign, fumbled the controls, miscalculated something, whatever. For me the obvious response is then to find out why that happened. Was he blinded by the sun, were the controls illogical, was he not trained enough, etcetera?
Isn't that much more productive than immediately assuming that he should be thrown is jail, for whatever good that would do?
I was never an Apple Maps user, but I was always of the persuasion that the map data and the routing logic was the problem, not whether the GPS had a six-foot margin of error instead of a six inch margin of error. Without good routing logic and accurate street maps, all the accuracy in the world won't help with navigation.
Although more accuracy always helps, I think the point is not the increased accuracy, but the increased coverage. The first vendor to have reliable indoor positioning will get bags and bags of money. Just think of the navigation in large shopping malls and airports. The Iridium localisation may help in that. If not, a team that is able to mix Iridium into the positioning is also able to mix Apple beacons into the positioning.
How is this fitting with Big Bang? Should not a round universe be shaped?
If you spill a drop of coffee on a piece of paper, the stain will expand to form a circle. The paper is still flat or otherwise an elliptic or otherwise non-circular stain would have formed.
I've never seen so much evangelizing about a particular subsystem change in Linux before, which makes me think that unlike other past changes, this one needs it rather than having it's own benefits do the selling...
The incessant whining about systemd in the last few years here on/. has been deafening. So if a major distribution then switches to systemd, and the world is not coming to an end, that's news for (this particular bunch of) nerds, no?
I realise that for some people here it is not welcome news, but news it is.
I helpfully added a hypothesis to complete your theory, you reply with a wall of text, and then you ask about my butthurt. That is, uhm, errr, an interesting perspective.
First do a study if this is really a good idea, including a scalability test. Then if so, Explain the citizens why this is such a good idea, and why this is worth the small investment. Then make it mandatory in the building code. Use some carrots and sticks to let people add sensors to existing buildings.
All boring existing government machinery, but that's how civilised countries got things line warning sirens, vaccination programs, street lights, fire departments, etc. etc.
These neat little theories are always so so convenient to explain why everyone else is inferior. Yet Pakistan elected a woman as prime minister: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.... Perhaps the world is more complicated than these little theories suggest?
It is worth mentioning the efforts of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/u.... They don't pretend to solve the whole crisis, but they do try to make navigation in the area a little easier by providing accurate and recent mapping information. At least in earlier crises, the effort was appreciated by the people on the ground: http://www.redcross.org/news/a....
There are no level crossings on Shinkansen/TGV/ICE tracks, so I must assume this system will also not have them. (And it's in tunnels most of the time anyway.)
Of course I realise what he's doing. He's trying to teach all the blithering idiots that are spouting facile astroturfed memes that the world is not as black-and-white as they are suggesting, that Muslims are not the moustache-twirling villains of Hollywood movies that some people like them to be, and that said idiots should not believe all the lies and propaganda that is produced on an industrial scale.
In other words, he is attempting the hardest task every teacher ever has, he is trying to make people think for themselves instead of just echoing groupthink.
It's a thankless task and probably a hopeless task, but I'm glad someone is at least trying.
Oooh, wow, I think I'll add a new rule then to let everyone transfer 10% of their income to my bank account.
Or perhaps we have to return from your fantasy land, and realise that your blind mullah Wosisname perhaps doesn't have the automatic authority you're claiming he has.
One of his "debunking" claims is that the Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, which is belied by just about every Muslim army ever.
Even if your claim about Muslim armies was true, how does that refute Prof. Cole's claim that Islamic law prohibits this? That people do not always obey the laws of their religion is hardly a new revelation, and is certainly not restricted to Islamic cultures.
You're using ad hominem attack, and you're moving the goalposts. Weak.
If said authority shows absolutely no concern for the wellbeing of "those people", as demonstrated by incident after incident, including this one, it is pretty damn hard to respect it. Fear it, yes. Respect it, no.
And calling someone a thug for (a) having, allegedly, a broken light on his car and (b) being too afraid to obey orders, is more than spinning the truth, it is a violent assault on the truth.
The difference is that there is well-documented evidence of climate change and its damage, and not of your made-up example.
Also note that the announced studies are to learn more about the exact damage. Thus, there is reason to believe there is a problem, but not enough is known, so the studies are trying to learn more.
To me this sounds like a pretty good investment of public money: useful science is done, and it is a defensive move against climate change. What's not to like here?
I fail to see what is so outrageous about her prediction. Let me repeat the quotes from the summary:
"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.
Is that really so implausible? There are hints that there is or has been life beyond Earth even in our own planetary system. There is solid evidence for many planets beyond our solar system, and although these discovered planets are usually too large to carry life similar to our own, they strongly hint that there are also smaller planets out there that could carry such life. Yes, Ellen Stofan is speculating, but if she's asked to speculate about the subject, this seems to me like a pretty solid reply.
We know where to look. We know how to look. In most cases we have the technology, and we're on a path to implementing it."
Again, pretty solid reasoning. What's the problem?
Of course she can still be wrong. Predicting the future is hard, and there are no perfect guarantees, but her prediction sounds pretty plausible to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me rephrase that: Global warming as enunciated by media popularizers is untestable.
Possibly. Is there only a single such theory? Who cares what the popularisers say?
The best evidence that it exists is melting of long-term ice in different parts of the world.
... and the rising global temperatures, and the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and there are probably a few other indicators as well.
But as a theory, in which you can predict specific weather changes when you feed it new observational data and then turn the crank, it's a complete failure.
They are climate models, not weather models, so that they don't work so well for weather prediction is no surprise. Good thing nobody is claiming that then, eh?
I really don't understand this urge to prosecute him. Why isn't this treated like an airplane accident, where only in extreme cases the pilots are prosecuted? Yes, the man may have made a mistake. Missed a sign, fumbled the controls, miscalculated something, whatever. For me the obvious response is then to find out why that happened. Was he blinded by the sun, were the controls illogical, was he not trained enough, etcetera?
Isn't that much more productive than immediately assuming that he should be thrown is jail, for whatever good that would do?
Sucks to be poor. But we don't run society based on impacts on the worlds loosers. Old Hondas are cheap and good.
And if there's no bread the poor should just eat cake, right?
What was that thing about people who forget history?
I was never an Apple Maps user, but I was always of the persuasion that the map data and the routing logic was the problem, not whether the GPS had a six-foot margin of error instead of a six inch margin of error. Without good routing logic and accurate street maps, all the accuracy in the world won't help with navigation.
Although more accuracy always helps, I think the point is not the increased accuracy, but the increased coverage. The first vendor to have reliable indoor positioning will get bags and bags of money. Just think of the navigation in large shopping malls and airports. The Iridium localisation may help in that. If not, a team that is able to mix Iridium into the positioning is also able to mix Apple beacons into the positioning.
How is this fitting with Big Bang? Should not a round universe be shaped?
If you spill a drop of coffee on a piece of paper, the stain will expand to form a circle. The paper is still flat or otherwise an elliptic or otherwise non-circular stain would have formed.
By that logic nothing has happened in computers in the last 60 years. After all, there were computers 60 years ago.
I've never seen so much evangelizing about a particular subsystem change in Linux before, which makes me think that unlike other past changes, this one needs it rather than having it's own benefits do the selling...
The incessant whining about systemd in the last few years here on /. has been deafening. So if a major distribution then switches to systemd, and the world is not coming to an end, that's news for (this particular bunch of) nerds, no?
I realise that for some people here it is not welcome news, but news it is.
So... whence does your butthurt come?
I helpfully added a hypothesis to complete your theory, you reply with a wall of text, and then you ask about my butthurt. That is, uhm, errr, an interesting perspective.
...on the face of it, if the researchers are so good, what are a couple of biologists doing trying to publish (survey-based) social science?
Doing science? Does it matter in what pigeon hole this particular research fits in?
Or perhaps it was because you were saying something stupid? I mean, let''s make a list of all the possible explanations. It's the scientific way.
All the CO2 readings are taken on top of Mt Mauna Loa in Hawaii. An Active Volcano!
If weather != Climate change then the CO2 readings from a single source != the whole climate CO2 reading.
I've seen quite a number of desperate last-ditch refutations of the obvious on /., but this one takes the biscuit.
This is why there are governments.
First do a study if this is really a good idea, including a scalability test. Then if so, Explain the citizens why this is such a good idea, and why this is worth the small investment. Then make it mandatory in the building code. Use some carrots and sticks to let people add sensors to existing buildings.
All boring existing government machinery, but that's how civilised countries got things line warning sirens, vaccination programs, street lights, fire departments, etc. etc.
These neat little theories are always so so convenient to explain why everyone else is inferior. Yet Pakistan elected a woman as prime minister: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.... Perhaps the world is more complicated than these little theories suggest?
It is worth mentioning the efforts of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team: http://hot.openstreetmap.org/u.... They don't pretend to solve the whole crisis, but they do try to make navigation in the area a little easier by providing accurate and recent mapping information. At least in earlier crises, the effort was appreciated by the people on the ground: http://www.redcross.org/news/a....
Who exactly is 'they' in this context?
There are no level crossings on Shinkansen/TGV/ICE tracks, so I must assume this system will also not have them. (And it's in tunnels most of the time anyway.)
You mean the NRA, or religions in general?
Err, health care insurance. In fact, they are already for a group of people through medicare, and that seems to work well.
Did you realize what he did when you cited him?
Of course I realise what he's doing. He's trying to teach all the blithering idiots that are spouting facile astroturfed memes that the world is not as black-and-white as they are suggesting, that Muslims are not the moustache-twirling villains of Hollywood movies that some people like them to be, and that said idiots should not believe all the lies and propaganda that is produced on an industrial scale.
In other words, he is attempting the hardest task every teacher ever has, he is trying to make people think for themselves instead of just echoing groupthink.
It's a thankless task and probably a hopeless task, but I'm glad someone is at least trying.
Oooh, wow, I think I'll add a new rule then to let everyone transfer 10% of their income to my bank account.
Or perhaps we have to return from your fantasy land, and realise that your blind mullah Wosisname perhaps doesn't have the automatic authority you're claiming he has.
One of his "debunking" claims is that the Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, which is belied by just about every Muslim army ever.
Even if your claim about Muslim armies was true, how does that refute Prof. Cole's claim that Islamic law prohibits this? That people do not always obey the laws of their religion is hardly a new revelation, and is certainly not restricted to Islamic cultures.
You're using ad hominem attack, and you're moving the goalposts. Weak.
[...] while Muslim faith prescribes terrorism.
That myth was debunked yet again this week by Juan Cole's Top Ten Ways Islamic Law forbids Terrorism. See: http://www.juancole.com/2015/0...
If said authority shows absolutely no concern for the wellbeing of "those people", as demonstrated by incident after incident, including this one, it is pretty damn hard to respect it. Fear it, yes. Respect it, no.
And calling someone a thug for (a) having, allegedly, a broken light on his car and (b) being too afraid to obey orders, is more than spinning the truth, it is a violent assault on the truth.
The difference is that there is well-documented evidence of climate change and its damage, and not of your made-up example.
Also note that the announced studies are to learn more about the exact damage. Thus, there is reason to believe there is a problem, but not enough is known, so the studies are trying to learn more.
To me this sounds like a pretty good investment of public money: useful science is done, and it is a defensive move against climate change. What's not to like here?
"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.
Is that really so implausible? There are hints that there is or has been life beyond Earth even in our own planetary system. There is solid evidence for many planets beyond our solar system, and although these discovered planets are usually too large to carry life similar to our own, they strongly hint that there are also smaller planets out there that could carry such life. Yes, Ellen Stofan is speculating, but if she's asked to speculate about the subject, this seems to me like a pretty solid reply.
We know where to look. We know how to look. In most cases we have the technology, and we're on a path to implementing it."
Again, pretty solid reasoning. What's the problem?
Of course she can still be wrong. Predicting the future is hard, and there are no perfect guarantees, but her prediction sounds pretty plausible to me.