The practice of 'religion' is man's quest to answer at least these four questions to his/her own satisfaction. Everybody asks and seeks answers to these in one way or another.
(...Why does faith give correct answers?....)
Faith in an of itself gives answers, but those may not be "correct". The ONLY one who knows the correct answers to these is God. There is no way science or any other human effort can discover these. God Himself has to tell us. When/if He tells us, then we have to BELIEVE or not. That is where faith gives the correct answers, IF we believe God. There are many religions in the world which claim to have the true message from God. All but one of them are upward directed in that human effort is needed/required to reach God. There is only ONE wherein it is God that takes initiative and comes down to man. That is God Himself leaving the realms outside of time and space and limiting Himself to the same constraints that we humans are currently subject to. Only Jesus Christ even makes the claim of having conquered our final enemy, death. In Him, and in Him alone are we given satisfying answers to these four questions. 1)He tells us where we came from, personally especially created by God. We did not evolve from a rock. 2)He tells us we're an eternal being, made in His image and likeness intended to one day rule even over the angels. That is who we are. 3) Our purpose is to worship Him and Him alone and learn in humility from Him to be gentle, loving, wise rulers over His entire creation, both physical and beyond. 4) Since we are eternal beings with a will, we may freely choose whether we wish to be and remain in His intimate presence or not, both now in time and forever when all time as ended.
He makes clear that the world, as it is today was not that way after He created it. It got messed up when the first humans DISBELIEVED God.
Don't look to the organized, institutional church for answers, but ONLY to Jesus. Get your answers straight from His words, not some ecclesiastical purveyor, priest or guru. Read His story, beginning with the Gospel of John first. Give Him another chance, or maybe the first chance, because He alone knows the deepest yearnings and longings of your innermost person.
.....And to address your problem with short-term forecasting, there's a world of difference between predicting if it will rain two weeks from now vs. long-term trends........
You may be right that there are differences between long term, say 100 years or more and short term, days, weeks or a few years weather modeling. Even so, the physical things you are modeling and the laws they follow are consistent. The only real difference is the element of time. I am not a climatologist, but it seems that the worth of the present models could be checked out. Here is a project I would attempt if I were going to get a PhD in weather and/or climate science. First I'd gather all known weather records I could dig up, world wide, say from maybe 1850 to 2006. Special note would be taken of major volcanic activity and other upheaval type of activity. I'd then input the data for about half of that period into all the modern climate models I could get my hands on. I'd see what sort of climate predictions these data produce for the second half. Then I'd compare these predictions of the models with the actual climate data for the last half and see how well they agree, if at all. The closer the predictions of each model match the actual data, the better that model is that made those predictions. Then I'd use the best agreeing model(s) to make predictions for future climate, including global warning. If all presently used models are widely divergent and none of their predictions match the actual historical data, then all models are obviously faulty and must be re-worked, before they could be used for predicting climate changes. I wonder if anybody has ever done anything to check our present models predictive ability with past known data. If done right, it should make a good thesis.
....complex fully 3-D GCMs used for long-term weather forecasting.......
If and when the scientists that pretend to know something about the weather and climate can ACCURATELY predict the weather even for two weeks in advance, then I might put some credence in their fancy computers and other expensive tools where which they try to augur the climate for the next 10, 20, or even a 100 years from now. Weather forecasting even only 5 to 10 days in advance has actually gotten worse here on the West Coast from what it used to be 50-60 years ago. Back then they did not have computers and satellites, but they did have weather ships out in the Pacific. Somebody on such a ship stuck their head outside and their finger in the air. Then they'd radio the mainland and tell their friends which way the wind was blowing and that raindrops were falling on their heads. Some of them got really hi-tech and launched a weather balloon. From that hard observation their friends on the mainland would tell the rest of us that we'd soon get wet also. Invariable they were just as, if not more correct than their successors are today.
(....Each of these models makes varying assumptions....)
Assumptions = faith or belief, not solid KNOWN measured data. If even one of these many varying inputs is fiction based on wishful thinking or an agenda, anything other than accurately measured data, then the most complex model is wrong. Such modeling runs are not worth the electricity it took to run the computer. Belief is fine for religions, but not science. Science to me is what we know for sure, measured, cut and dried hard data not some maybe, maybe not assumptions. Anytime I read a so called scientific article where faith words or phrases are used, I often stop reading right there. I don't want to know what these guys BELIEVE, I want to learn what they KNOW, have actually measured and observed. It is actually quite rare these days to read a scientific paper that does NOT spout stuff about what some or most so called scientists believe or assume about their data.
I am not at all impressed by those who claim to know the future which includes tomorrows weather. I also remember reading about a coming ice age back when I was a boy.
The problem with all models, computer and otherwise is that those that build them make certain assumptions and simplifications. If those assumptions are wrong, then the models are useless. The word assumption is scientific jargon for faith or belief. There are other components of the air that are far better greenhouse contributors. Water vapor and methane are only two that come to mind right now. Then there are the particulates, both manmade and natural. How are the known and largely unknown solar cycles figured in? How are these represented and accounted for? You are right, climate science is very complicated and many assumptions are made about factors we simply just don't know. We are asked to make far reaching, expensive, political and economic decisions based on skimpy or totally non-existent knowledge and data. There are some with an agenda who want to impose draconian controls on the mobility and freedom of technologically advanced nations. All these have one thing in common: Control of an elite few over the (in their view) unwashed masses. In earlier eras of history, the ruling elites have used religion as a control mechanism. Now they try to use the modern religion of so called science to do the same sort of thing.
There is no evidence that the earth's atmosphere was ever devoid or even much lower in oxygen than now. Oxygen is the most abundant element in the crust of the planet, even now. Conjecturing that NONE of this was present in the atmosphere at any time is a big leap of faith. Even if your supposition about the past were correct, that doesn't mean that all the oxygen presently in the atmosphere would disappear if we burned all the fossil fuels and released its carbon back into the air. Even burning every gram of fossil fuel we know about, would not be enough to convert all the oxygen NOW in the air to CO2. Thus your supposed conditions of the past would not recur.
.....knowledgeable people were aware that the earth was not flat.......
Perhaps my example of the flat earth was not the most appropriate to what I wanted to express. Scientists make certain observations and experiments. These measurements are repeatable and hard to argue with. It is hard to refute the measurements that the temperature of the planet is increasing a little, almost everywhere. It is the INTERPRETATION of these measurements which is the issue. The faulty idea is that correlation is equivalent to causation. This error is a big factor for many saying that the C02 level increase is the reason for this factual increase in measured temperatures. There are often skid marks on the pavement near car accidents. This doesn't mean that skid marks cause accidents. Another example: we can measure the red shift of distant starlight. This is a fact. We cannot prove the interpretation of this red shift as being due to the doppler effect and then come to the conclusion from that interpretation that the galaxies are moving away from us and each other at a significant fraction of the speed of light. This interpretation of the cause of the red shift leads to all sorts of difficulties in view of other observations and forces cosmologists to come up with fictional, never observed constructs, such as dark matter and energy.
.....That's why you get the line "scientists agree on"........
Yes, even if there is evidence to the contrary. There are scientific FACTS, based on measurements and experiments. Then there is the interpretation of the meaning of these facts. Warming is indeed measured. What we cannot measure is the reason for this warming.
Another thing to think about: Where was all that carbon before it became fossil fuel? If it is indeed true we are burning dinosaurs from long ago, then how did the carbon get into the plants which the dinos ate? Was all that carbon in the atmosphere, where plants could use photosynthesis to make food for the dinos and other life forms? If so, then the earth must have been a rather warm place. The fact is that there is a lot of evidence that our planet was a LOT warmer ages ago and life flourished in abundance. There is evidence that the oceans were never higher than they are today and we find tropical fossils in places now covered with miles of ice. Growing oranges in Alaska and bananas in Siberia might not be so terrible.
Your thoughts on measurements, deviation and errors are correctly moderated informative. There is pretty good agreement on the FACT that there is some warming, but its cause is interpretation to suit an agenda.
....There may be a correlation, but that doesn't mean that there's a cause-effect relationship......
Indeed true! Funny you know, every time there is a house on fire, we find this big red truck and these people with plastic suits and big hats. They and their weird red truck must be the cause of why the house is burning. Most of the time there is a car crash, we find skid marks on the pavement nearby. Those skid marks must have caused the crash.
......are more credible than the scientific establishment?......
If it had never happened that the majority of people were WRONG about anything and the lone voice in the wilderness shown to be correct in the end, then that argument "the majority of (fill in the blank here) are correct, then such a hollow reasoning might be at least partially valid. Historically, the "establishment" has been wrong far more often than anyone making confident assertions in the field of science ought to be comfortable with. Stating that the majority is right about anything they believe because of the fact they ARE the majority is probably the stupidest asserting any human can make. Unfortunately that is how it is in science, politics and religion. Unfortunately, it seems that most here on/. are buying that dumb argument also.
....No reputible sources are disputing global warming......
At one time reputable sources believed in spontaneous generation of organisms, the phlogiston theory of heat and cold. All sorts of other things that someone who was considered to be a NUT at the time, later became accepted because the earlier ideas were eventually CRUSHED by the mounting evidence. Mounting evidence that climate, like many things in nature is cyclical, will eventually demolish the now briefly politically correct idea that humans are the cause of global warming. Global warming is of course there, but it is part of the normal cyclical nature of our planet. It seems that human arrogance has no boundaries, to think that we humans can influence the large scale climate of the entire planet! One hurricane, such as the devastating Kathrina, involves more energy than mankind has used in its entire history. The Krakatoa volcano released far more energy and dust into the atmosphere than all the nuclear weapons of mankind exploding there all at once ever could. We humans should not give ourselves such proud airs as if we had much say-so over this world we live in. We should however take care of how we treat this planet, since we did not make it and are not its owners. We should above all learn to live in peace and love with one another, rather than worry about global warming.
.....The question is how likely is this guy to be right........
No, that is NOT the question. One of the statements in the article is that the ice in the north has diminished wile the ice in the south has increased. That is simple evidence that ought to be verifiable by any decent climatologist. If this evidence is true, then these smart guys who think greenhouse gases cause global warming, ought to be able to come up with an interpretation of this evidence.
Historically, the establishment science has be wrong far more often than right. Historically, REPUTABLE scientists, believed the earth was flat and believed in spontaneous generation of life and other crap that was later shown by a single person to be just that, crap and wrong. There have been many, if not most widely held 'accepted' ideas that were eventually overthrown by the lone researcher who found some embarrassing evidence that refuted the then current ideas. The very idea that climate is cyclical makes sense simply from the known fact that most things in nature are that way. We have obvious cycles, such as days, seasons and years and not so obvious ones such as the sun's output and the slight wobble of the earth as it orbits. Some cycles may be centuries or millennia. So what is so strange then about the idea that climate is also cyclical? There is a fair amount of historical evidence that this is so.
Yes, but with the prices of Macs, that 3% has about 30% of disposable income and it is therefore an unwise business decision to shut them out of the cash register.
Of course it is the site. Theirs isn't the only one that tells you they want Windows and IE only. Safari has a debug mode, wherein you can instruct the program to lie about its identity. You can tell it to identify itself to the server as IE and the OS as Windows. After that, many, if not most of such sites work perfectly fine. This shows that it is a blatant, deliberate attempt to keep non-MS users out. I am not one of these conspiracy types, but based on this, it is hard not to come to such a conclusion. When you tell Safari to lie to the Walmart video site, it lets you in just fine under OSX and Safari. it looks perfectly OK also. Of course I would never register in or buy anything from such a site anyway.
....Has anyone else with Firefox, Safari, Opera and other browsers tried going to the Walmart site?......
Just for fun, yes I have. When I use straight Safari I got the message that Walmart only supports IE, but when I told Safari to lie (debug mode) and tell their site that I am using IE, with Windows, it worked fine. Of course I didn't attempt to download anything which i would never do anyway. After all, I like old movies and have gotten some from Walmart at $5.50 or so outa of their bargain bin. Eventually I suppose the expensive downloads on the site will sell for that price or less also.
It seems they are deliberately doing this as a matter of policy. It has nothing to do with programming incompatibility.
....Instead, focus on the lives of others who are also in the same boat as you are. Take care of each other. Embrace your Humanity......
Of course, faith as such doesn't provide any answers nor even possible answers. I can have all the faith in the world to survive drinking a cup of potassium cyanide, but it is unlikely I will. I do have faith in the God of the Bible, the one true God who exists, the 'I am' who spoke to Moses long ago. He does reveal in this eternal message to humanity, definitive unambiguous answers to the four questions. He tells us therein the same sentiments you expressed in the quoted excerpt. He also tells us why He desires these things from us and what choices we have concerning these things and how they will affect our destiny after we leave time and space through death. We read right in the opening pages that we are eternal creatures made in the image of God. This is the immense gift that is given to this life form called homo sapiens.
....and that man (self) is ultimately the only thing that matters......
Exactly and that self(ishness) is what many worship and that is religion. Theism is belief in God. Some word (from the Greek) mean the opposite if an "a" is in front of them. When you go to an (a)musement park you go to a place wher you do not "muse" which is to think. So then atheist is simply a religion whose adherents do not believe in a God. Believing there is no god doesn't automatically make such a one an indescribably evil, (a)moral or even immoral person. It simply means they are only accountable to themselves and whoever they choose to be or are forced to be accountable to. So I agree with you entirely.
....The first poster recommended that we don't try to figure out a why.....
Science is singularly bad at answering "why" questions. It cannot answer why we are here or why the laws of physics are what they are. We can explore the laws of physics and HOW they work, but not why. Science cannot answer why we all are thrown the curves of life and why we suffer. Science cannot really explore the past unless someone was there. We dig up fossils, but we can only interpret what they might mean and how they got there. We don't really know. One interpretation is that they formed slowly over millions of years. Another is that they were formed in an immense world wide catastrophe involving whole oceans of water rushing hither and yon across this planet. Science can provide evidence for either of these or alternate interpretations, but we don't really KNOW for sure. Many cultures do have legends about a flood and a very few people saved in a boat. All we know for sure is that there are fossils, but how they got there is open to interpretation of the evidence. When it comes to the questions of origins, science provides evidence. This evidence however can be and has been interpreted by people in various ways, depending on their world view. Some interpret the evidence science brings to bolster their belief that we are only a cosmic accident without reason for existing. Some who believe this do not enjoy their belief all that much and millions are being spent on projects like SETI because intuitively we humans don't REALLY like the idea that we are utterly alone in a vast purposeless universe.
I prefer to believe we are here by the will of a supreme Creator for purposes that we can only know if He comes here and tells us what these might be. I also believe He did just that by becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ.
....and it is totally locked down using encryption, session keys, etc.....
There is a major difference in protecting an on-going communication system and a write locked, read-only system, such as recorded entertainment material. In a communication system each recipient gets a unique temporary key for that one time. For recordings the key has to be tied to the recording or the device or some combination. Once that is done and the secret of the key is out, the key can be used on all recordings using that key. The cable and satellite systems are secure because the key can be different for each customer and for each program and can be changed any time. The only hole left here is the fact that the decrypted material can be intercepted and stored. That will always be the case in any communication system destined for human senses. In any case, the GSM style system will not work for entertainment unless each song/movie is encrypted with a unique key for each user and that key is sent over a secure link EACH time it is needed when the user wants to view/listen to the material on whatever device(s) he/she wishes.
...I have no problem with a well implemented DRM (possible?).....
Unfortunately DRM, that is preventing digital copying, is IMpossible, even in theory. Like Jobs wrote, such DRM is based on keeping a secret. That secret is the whereabouts of the key which MUST be given to each user in order to unlock the content so it can be seen/heard. Like Mr. Jobs rightly said, secrets cannot be kept from a large number of people. AFAIK there has NEVER been a digital copy-lockout system that has NOT been broken. Digital Rights can be "managed" till the cows come home, but NOBODY will EVER prevent the secret location of the key from being found. If more than one person knows a so called "secret" it is no longer a secret. If I want to let you into my house, I can give you the key. Once you have the key you are able to give that key on anyone else and they too can walk right in. I am truly surprised that the other wise assumed to be smart record company executives don't understand something simple like that. They have been brainwashed by the sellers of copy protection schemes.
....but if we attribute something to god from the get-go, we will not gain knowledge from it........
That is a fallacy. If I know an engineer built a bridge, I can give credit to him and admire his work. That doesn't and shouldn't prevent me from studying its construction and learn how to build bridges. As humans we give credit to genius and admire it and try to learn from a master craftsman's works. Scientists more than others should stand in awe and worship of God as they avidly study His grand design and figure out how to use the laws and principles He put in the creation. An astronomer who looks out into the depths of space ought to be amazed at the One who put it all there and avidly endeavors to figure out how it is all put together. The psalmist of old knew this. He writes: "The heavens declare the glory of God."
....If what we think are constants instead actually change over time, we would know simply by running experiments at different times.....
The fact is that in order to measure time over any period of time, it necessary to have a known clock. If you use anything to measure time that also changes at the same rate as your clock, then you will always measure the same constant speed or time. All time measurements requires a periodic motion of some kind. All movement is governed by one of the fundamental forces of the universe. There is the electromagnetic also called the electro-weak force, the strong nuclear force and gravity. Of these, only gravity and the electromagnetic force can be or at least have been used to operate clocks, both man made and natural. Light is generated by the motion of atoms, which is governed by the electromagnetic force. All equations for these motions contain a time unit. If this electromagnetic force changes, then all clocks, throughout the entire universe will do so instantly. We observe that this exactly what happened, since the red shift is quantized. That is it does not vary in a smooth function, as required by the doppler INTERPRETATION, but in jumps, quanta of energy bands associated with the energy bands of vibrating atoms. Because of this non-linear shift over time, the atomic clocks are non-linear also.
There are only two known ways to measure time. The second way is to employ the gravitational force. The equations for gravity do NOT contain any time units. Gravity depends solely on mass and distance. We can use the motions of the heavenly bodies or build a pendulum clocks. However, in practice, over the short term of human lives, we can count the vibrations of atoms many orders of magnitude more accurately than the swings of a pendulum. However, even so, the atomic measurements have consistently varied in one direction only when compared to the gravitational clock of the motion of the earth and planets. That direction is to the slowing down of the atomic clocks against the gravitational ones. This slowdown is not enough to make you late for your next plane trip, but very noticeable over long periods of time.
So when you are talking about units of time, such as years, you need to specify whether these are measured by the atom or by gravity. If you say atomic, then yes, the earth is indeed billions of "years" old. However if you are talking about years as defined by the number of trips this rock of ours has made around the sun, it is a much smaller number. You see time itself is not absolute, (Einstein) nor is our atomic measurement of it absolute.
.....Attributing everything to god completely debunks the purpose of scientific research.......
On the contrary, early scientists believed in God and precisely because they believed in the God of the Bible, a God of order and reason. They figured that His creation could also be explored by reasonable thinking and careful observation. Just because I believe somebody built the airplane doesn't mean I can't study how it flies and use it to quickly get to distant places. Just because I believe somebody carefully designed the DNA life coding system doesn't mean I cannot explore it and possibly use it to overcome sicknesses and improve life for all humanity. Just because I believe that God came up with the laws of electricity and the other physical laws, doesn't mean I can't explore these laws and use them to make all the technological gadgets we have today.
It is either that or everything made itself -- which is absurd. Logic demands that whoever or whatever made the universe is in itself/himself outside the universe, that is outside of time and space. Logic also requires that laws are pure products of mind. They are not physical. The laws by which the universe operates arose and exist apart from it and cause the time-matter-energy therein to behave in certain consistent ways. Science can test these laws and explore their operation. The complexity of operation of operation arising from these laws gives testimony of an awesome intelligent mind from which these laws were released. Genesis 1:1 clothes this event in human language. The Creator tells us that time-space (beginning- heavens) and matter-energy (earth) appeared out of nothing and immediately started to obey the laws ordained for them. It's fun and awe inspiring to study how that all works. Scientists are simply thinking God's thoughts after Him. It is a pity that so few of them wish to give Him credit for His grand design.
.....You don't have to have religion to make it make sense......
There are many things that don't make sense. That's why there isn't, and never has been a single human that was/isn't religious. Everybody has a world view and that is at the core of religion. The rest is just trappings. There is not now, and there has never been, a culture that did not have some form of religion. The human creature is incurably religious.
Science is the modern world view and therefore religion. It attempts to answer four questions every thinking human asks at some time in their life. 1) Who am I really? 2) Where did I come from, 3) Why am I here, 4) Where am I going after I die. Science cannot answer these, only faith can. Of all life forms on this planet, we have evidence that only people seek answers to these. God is the only one who gives satisfying answers to these.
Slashdot Mirror
....good enough definition of 'religious'........
The practice of 'religion' is man's quest to answer at least these four questions to his/her own satisfaction. Everybody asks and seeks answers to these in one way or another.
(...Why does faith give correct answers?....)
Faith in an of itself gives answers, but those may not be "correct". The ONLY one who knows the correct answers to these is God. There is no way science or any other human effort can discover these. God Himself has to tell us. When/if He tells us, then we have to BELIEVE or not. That is where faith gives the correct answers, IF we believe God. There are many religions in the world which claim to have the true message from God. All but one of them are upward directed in that human effort is needed/required to reach God. There is only ONE wherein it is God that takes initiative and comes down to man. That is God Himself leaving the realms outside of time and space and limiting Himself to the same constraints that we humans are currently subject to. Only Jesus Christ even makes the claim of having conquered our final enemy, death. In Him, and in Him alone are we given satisfying answers to these four questions. 1)He tells us where we came from, personally especially created by God. We did not evolve from a rock. 2)He tells us we're an eternal being, made in His image and likeness intended to one day rule even over the angels. That is who we are. 3) Our purpose is to worship Him and Him alone and learn in humility from Him to be gentle, loving, wise rulers over His entire creation, both physical and beyond. 4) Since we are eternal beings with a will, we may freely choose whether we wish to be and remain in His intimate presence or not, both now in time and forever when all time as ended.
He makes clear that the world, as it is today was not that way after He created it. It got messed up when the first humans DISBELIEVED God.
Don't look to the organized, institutional church for answers, but ONLY to Jesus. Get your answers straight from His words, not some ecclesiastical purveyor, priest or guru. Read His story, beginning with the Gospel of John first. Give Him another chance, or maybe the first chance, because He alone knows the deepest yearnings and longings of your innermost person.
.....And to address your problem with short-term forecasting, there's a world of difference between predicting if it will rain two weeks from now vs. long-term trends........
You may be right that there are differences between long term, say 100 years or more and short term, days, weeks or a few years weather modeling. Even so, the physical things you are modeling and the laws they follow are consistent. The only real difference is the element of time. I am not a climatologist, but it seems that the worth of the present models could be checked out. Here is a project I would attempt if I were going to get a PhD in weather and/or climate science. First I'd gather all known weather records I could dig up, world wide, say from maybe 1850 to 2006. Special note would be taken of major volcanic activity and other upheaval type of activity. I'd then input the data for about half of that period into all the modern climate models I could get my hands on. I'd see what sort of climate predictions these data produce for the second half. Then I'd compare these predictions of the models with the actual climate data for the last half and see how well they agree, if at all. The closer the predictions of each model match the actual data, the better that model is that made those predictions. Then I'd use the best agreeing model(s) to make predictions for future climate, including global warning. If all presently used models are widely divergent and none of their predictions match the actual historical data, then all models are obviously faulty and must be re-worked, before they could be used for predicting climate changes. I wonder if anybody has ever done anything to check our present models predictive ability with past known data. If done right, it should make a good thesis.
....complex fully 3-D GCMs used for long-term weather forecasting.......
....)
If and when the scientists that pretend to know something about the weather and climate can ACCURATELY predict the weather even for two weeks in advance, then I might put some credence in their fancy computers and other expensive tools where which they try to augur the climate for the next 10, 20, or even a 100 years from now. Weather forecasting even only 5 to 10 days in advance has actually gotten worse here on the West Coast from what it used to be 50-60 years ago. Back then they did not have computers and satellites, but they did have weather ships out in the Pacific. Somebody on such a ship stuck their head outside and their finger in the air. Then they'd radio the mainland and tell their friends which way the wind was blowing and that raindrops were falling on their heads. Some of them got really hi-tech and launched a weather balloon. From that hard observation their friends on the mainland would tell the rest of us that we'd soon get wet also. Invariable they were just as, if not more correct than their successors are today.
(....Each of these models makes varying assumptions
Assumptions = faith or belief, not solid KNOWN measured data. If even one of these many varying inputs is fiction based on wishful thinking or an agenda, anything other than accurately measured data, then the most complex model is wrong. Such modeling runs are not worth the electricity it took to run the computer. Belief is fine for religions, but not science. Science to me is what we know for sure, measured, cut and dried hard data not some maybe, maybe not assumptions. Anytime I read a so called scientific article where faith words or phrases are used, I often stop reading right there. I don't want to know what these guys BELIEVE, I want to learn what they KNOW, have actually measured and observed. It is actually quite rare these days to read a scientific paper that does NOT spout stuff about what some or most so called scientists believe or assume about their data.
I am not at all impressed by those who claim to know the future which includes tomorrows weather. I also remember reading about a coming ice age back when I was a boy.
....best to create some computer models ......
The problem with all models, computer and otherwise is that those that build them make certain assumptions and simplifications. If those assumptions are wrong, then the models are useless. The word assumption is scientific jargon for faith or belief. There are other components of the air that are far better greenhouse contributors. Water vapor and methane are only two that come to mind right now. Then there are the particulates, both manmade and natural. How are the known and largely unknown solar cycles figured in? How are these represented and accounted for? You are right, climate science is very complicated and many assumptions are made about factors we simply just don't know. We are asked to make far reaching, expensive, political and economic decisions based on skimpy or totally non-existent knowledge and data. There are some with an agenda who want to impose draconian controls on the mobility and freedom of technologically advanced nations. All these have one thing in common: Control of an elite few over the (in their view) unwashed masses. In earlier eras of history, the ruling elites have used religion as a control mechanism. Now they try to use the modern religion of so called science to do the same sort of thing.
.....much more CO2, and no oxygen.......
There is no evidence that the earth's atmosphere was ever devoid or even much lower in oxygen than now. Oxygen is the most abundant element in the crust of the planet, even now. Conjecturing that NONE of this was present in the atmosphere at any time is a big leap of faith. Even if your supposition about the past were correct, that doesn't mean that all the oxygen presently in the atmosphere would disappear if we burned all the fossil fuels and released its carbon back into the air. Even burning every gram of fossil fuel we know about, would not be enough to convert all the oxygen NOW in the air to CO2. Thus your supposed conditions of the past would not recur.
.....knowledgeable people were aware that the earth was not flat.......
Perhaps my example of the flat earth was not the most appropriate to what I wanted to express. Scientists make certain observations and experiments. These measurements are repeatable and hard to argue with. It is hard to refute the measurements that the temperature of the planet is increasing a little, almost everywhere. It is the INTERPRETATION of these measurements which is the issue. The faulty idea is that correlation is equivalent to causation. This error is a big factor for many saying that the C02 level increase is the reason for this factual increase in measured temperatures. There are often skid marks on the pavement near car accidents. This doesn't mean that skid marks cause accidents. Another example: we can measure the red shift of distant starlight. This is a fact. We cannot prove the interpretation of this red shift as being due to the doppler effect and then come to the conclusion from that interpretation that the galaxies are moving away from us and each other at a significant fraction of the speed of light. This interpretation of the cause of the red shift leads to all sorts of difficulties in view of other observations and forces cosmologists to come up with fictional, never observed constructs, such as dark matter and energy.
.....That's why you get the line "scientists agree on"........
Yes, even if there is evidence to the contrary. There are scientific FACTS, based on measurements and experiments. Then there is the interpretation of the meaning of these facts. Warming is indeed measured. What we cannot measure is the reason for this warming.
....Uh, think again.....
Another thing to think about: Where was all that carbon before it became fossil fuel? If it is indeed true we are burning dinosaurs from long ago, then how did the carbon get into the plants which the dinos ate? Was all that carbon in the atmosphere, where plants could use photosynthesis to make food for the dinos and other life forms? If so, then the earth must have been a rather warm place. The fact is that there is a lot of evidence that our planet was a LOT warmer ages ago and life flourished in abundance. There is evidence that the oceans were never higher than they are today and we find tropical fossils in places now covered with miles of ice. Growing oranges in Alaska and bananas in Siberia might not be so terrible.
Your thoughts on measurements, deviation and errors are correctly moderated informative. There is pretty good agreement on the FACT that there is some warming, but its cause is interpretation to suit an agenda.
....There may be a correlation, but that doesn't mean that there's a cause-effect relationship......
Indeed true! Funny you know, every time there is a house on fire, we find this big red truck and these people with plastic suits and big hats. They and their weird red truck must be the cause of why the house is burning. Most of the time there is a car crash, we find skid marks on the pavement nearby. Those skid marks must have caused the crash.
......are more credible than the scientific establishment?......
/. are buying that dumb argument also.
If it had never happened that the majority of people were WRONG about anything and the lone voice in the wilderness shown to be correct in the end, then that argument "the majority of (fill in the blank here) are correct, then such a hollow reasoning might be at least partially valid. Historically, the "establishment" has been wrong far more often than anyone making confident assertions in the field of science ought to be comfortable with. Stating that the majority is right about anything they believe because of the fact they ARE the majority is probably the stupidest asserting any human can make. Unfortunately that is how it is in science, politics and religion. Unfortunately, it seems that most here on
....No reputible sources are disputing global warming......
At one time reputable sources believed in spontaneous generation of organisms, the phlogiston theory of heat and cold. All sorts of other things that someone who was considered to be a NUT at the time, later became accepted because the earlier ideas were eventually CRUSHED by the mounting evidence. Mounting evidence that climate, like many things in nature is cyclical, will eventually demolish the now briefly politically correct idea that humans are the cause of global warming. Global warming is of course there, but it is part of the normal cyclical nature of our planet. It seems that human arrogance has no boundaries, to think that we humans can influence the large scale climate of the entire planet! One hurricane, such as the devastating Kathrina, involves more energy than mankind has used in its entire history. The Krakatoa volcano released far more energy and dust into the atmosphere than all the nuclear weapons of mankind exploding there all at once ever could. We humans should not give ourselves such proud airs as if we had much say-so over this world we live in. We should however take care of how we treat this planet, since we did not make it and are not its owners. We should above all learn to live in peace and love with one another, rather than worry about global warming.
.....The question is how likely is this guy to be right........
No, that is NOT the question. One of the statements in the article is that the ice in the north has diminished wile the ice in the south has increased. That is simple evidence that ought to be verifiable by any decent climatologist. If this evidence is true, then these smart guys who think greenhouse gases cause global warming, ought to be able to come up with an interpretation of this evidence.
Historically, the establishment science has be wrong far more often than right. Historically, REPUTABLE scientists, believed the earth was flat and believed in spontaneous generation of life and other crap that was later shown by a single person to be just that, crap and wrong. There have been many, if not most widely held 'accepted' ideas that were eventually overthrown by the lone researcher who found some embarrassing evidence that refuted the then current ideas. The very idea that climate is cyclical makes sense simply from the known fact that most things in nature are that way. We have obvious cycles, such as days, seasons and years and not so obvious ones such as the sun's output and the slight wobble of the earth as it orbits. Some cycles may be centuries or millennia. So what is so strange then about the idea that climate is also cyclical? There is a fair amount of historical evidence that this is so.
...Like all of 3%......
Yes, but with the prices of Macs, that 3% has about 30% of disposable income and it is therefore an unwise business decision to shut them out of the cash register.
....OSX is not broken, the site is....
Of course it is the site. Theirs isn't the only one that tells you they want Windows and IE only. Safari has a debug mode, wherein you can instruct the program to lie about its identity. You can tell it to identify itself to the server as IE and the OS as Windows. After that, many, if not most of such sites work perfectly fine. This shows that it is a blatant, deliberate attempt to keep non-MS users out. I am not one of these conspiracy types, but based on this, it is hard not to come to such a conclusion. When you tell Safari to lie to the Walmart video site, it lets you in just fine under OSX and Safari. it looks perfectly OK also. Of course I would never register in or buy anything from such a site anyway.
....Has anyone else with Firefox, Safari, Opera and other browsers tried going to the Walmart site?......
Just for fun, yes I have. When I use straight Safari I got the message that Walmart only supports IE, but when I told Safari to lie (debug mode) and tell their site that I am using IE, with Windows, it worked fine. Of course I didn't attempt to download anything which i would never do anyway. After all, I like old movies and have gotten some from Walmart at $5.50 or so outa of their bargain bin. Eventually I suppose the expensive downloads on the site will sell for that price or less also.
It seems they are deliberately doing this as a matter of policy. It has nothing to do with programming incompatibility.
....Instead, focus on the lives of others who are also in the same boat as you are. Take care of each other. Embrace your Humanity......
Of course, faith as such doesn't provide any answers nor even possible answers. I can have all the faith in the world to survive drinking a cup of potassium cyanide, but it is unlikely I will. I do have faith in the God of the Bible, the one true God who exists, the 'I am' who spoke to Moses long ago. He does reveal in this eternal message to humanity, definitive unambiguous answers to the four questions. He tells us therein the same sentiments you expressed in the quoted excerpt. He also tells us why He desires these things from us and what choices we have concerning these things and how they will affect our destiny after we leave time and space through death. We read right in the opening pages that we are eternal creatures made in the image of God. This is the immense gift that is given to this life form called homo sapiens.
....and that man (self) is ultimately the only thing that matters......
Exactly and that self(ishness) is what many worship and that is religion. Theism is belief in God. Some word (from the Greek) mean the opposite if an "a" is in front of them. When you go to an (a)musement park you go to a place wher you do not "muse" which is to think. So then atheist is simply a religion whose adherents do not believe in a God. Believing there is no god doesn't automatically make such a one an indescribably evil, (a)moral or even immoral person. It simply means they are only accountable to themselves and whoever they choose to be or are forced to be accountable to. So I agree with you entirely.
....The first poster recommended that we don't try to figure out a why.....
Science is singularly bad at answering "why" questions. It cannot answer why we are here or why the laws of physics are what they are. We can explore the laws of physics and HOW they work, but not why. Science cannot answer why we all are thrown the curves of life and why we suffer. Science cannot really explore the past unless someone was there. We dig up fossils, but we can only interpret what they might mean and how they got there. We don't really know. One interpretation is that they formed slowly over millions of years. Another is that they were formed in an immense world wide catastrophe involving whole oceans of water rushing hither and yon across this planet. Science can provide evidence for either of these or alternate interpretations, but we don't really KNOW for sure. Many cultures do have legends about a flood and a very few people saved in a boat. All we know for sure is that there are fossils, but how they got there is open to interpretation of the evidence. When it comes to the questions of origins, science provides evidence. This evidence however can be and has been interpreted by people in various ways, depending on their world view. Some interpret the evidence science brings to bolster their belief that we are only a cosmic accident without reason for existing. Some who believe this do not enjoy their belief all that much and millions are being spent on projects like SETI because intuitively we humans don't REALLY like the idea that we are utterly alone in a vast purposeless universe.
I prefer to believe we are here by the will of a supreme Creator for purposes that we can only know if He comes here and tells us what these might be. I also believe He did just that by becoming human in the person of Jesus Christ.
....and it is totally locked down using encryption, session keys, etc.....
There is a major difference in protecting an on-going communication system and a write locked, read-only system, such as recorded entertainment material. In a communication system each recipient gets a unique temporary key for that one time. For recordings the key has to be tied to the recording or the device or some combination. Once that is done and the secret of the key is out, the key can be used on all recordings using that key. The cable and satellite systems are secure because the key can be different for each customer and for each program and can be changed any time. The only hole left here is the fact that the decrypted material can be intercepted and stored. That will always be the case in any communication system destined for human senses. In any case, the GSM style system will not work for entertainment unless each song/movie is encrypted with a unique key for each user and that key is sent over a secure link EACH time it is needed when the user wants to view/listen to the material on whatever device(s) he/she wishes.
...I have no problem with a well implemented DRM (possible?).....
Unfortunately DRM, that is preventing digital copying, is IMpossible, even in theory. Like Jobs wrote, such DRM is based on keeping a secret. That secret is the whereabouts of the key which MUST be given to each user in order to unlock the content so it can be seen/heard. Like Mr. Jobs rightly said, secrets cannot be kept from a large number of people. AFAIK there has NEVER been a digital copy-lockout system that has NOT been broken. Digital Rights can be "managed" till the cows come home, but NOBODY will EVER prevent the secret location of the key from being found. If more than one person knows a so called "secret" it is no longer a secret. If I want to let you into my house, I can give you the key. Once you have the key you are able to give that key on anyone else and they too can walk right in. I am truly surprised that the other wise assumed to be smart record company executives don't understand something simple like that. They have been brainwashed by the sellers of copy protection schemes.
....but if we attribute something to god from the get-go, we will not gain knowledge from it........
That is a fallacy. If I know an engineer built a bridge, I can give credit to him and admire his work. That doesn't and shouldn't prevent me from studying its construction and learn how to build bridges. As humans we give credit to genius and admire it and try to learn from a master craftsman's works. Scientists more than others should stand in awe and worship of God as they avidly study His grand design and figure out how to use the laws and principles He put in the creation. An astronomer who looks out into the depths of space ought to be amazed at the One who put it all there and avidly endeavors to figure out how it is all put together. The psalmist of old knew this. He writes: "The heavens declare the glory of God."
....If what we think are constants instead actually change over time, we would know simply by running experiments at different times.....
The fact is that in order to measure time over any period of time, it necessary to have a known clock. If you use anything to measure time that also changes at the same rate as your clock, then you will always measure the same constant speed or time. All time measurements requires a periodic motion of some kind. All movement is governed by one of the fundamental forces of the universe. There is the electromagnetic also called the electro-weak force, the strong nuclear force and gravity. Of these, only gravity and the electromagnetic force can be or at least have been used to operate clocks, both man made and natural. Light is generated by the motion of atoms, which is governed by the electromagnetic force. All equations for these motions contain a time unit. If this electromagnetic force changes, then all clocks, throughout the entire universe will do so instantly. We observe that this exactly what happened, since the red shift is quantized. That is it does not vary in a smooth function, as required by the doppler INTERPRETATION, but in jumps, quanta of energy bands associated with the energy bands of vibrating atoms. Because of this non-linear shift over time, the atomic clocks are non-linear also.
There are only two known ways to measure time. The second way is to employ the gravitational force. The equations for gravity do NOT contain any time units. Gravity depends solely on mass and distance. We can use the motions of the heavenly bodies or build a pendulum clocks. However, in practice, over the short term of human lives, we can count the vibrations of atoms many orders of magnitude more accurately than the swings of a pendulum. However, even so, the atomic measurements have consistently varied in one direction only when compared to the gravitational clock of the motion of the earth and planets. That direction is to the slowing down of the atomic clocks against the gravitational ones. This slowdown is not enough to make you late for your next plane trip, but very noticeable over long periods of time.
So when you are talking about units of time, such as years, you need to specify whether these are measured by the atom or by gravity. If you say atomic, then yes, the earth is indeed billions of "years" old. However if you are talking about years as defined by the number of trips this rock of ours has made around the sun, it is a much smaller number. You see time itself is not absolute, (Einstein) nor is our atomic measurement of it absolute.
.....Attributing everything to god completely debunks the purpose of scientific research.......
On the contrary, early scientists believed in God and precisely because they believed in the God of the Bible, a God of order and reason. They figured that His creation could also be explored by reasonable thinking and careful observation. Just because I believe somebody built the airplane doesn't mean I can't study how it flies and use it to quickly get to distant places. Just because I believe somebody carefully designed the DNA life coding system doesn't mean I cannot explore it and possibly use it to overcome sicknesses and improve life for all humanity. Just because I believe that God came up with the laws of electricity and the other physical laws, doesn't mean I can't explore these laws and use them to make all the technological gadgets we have today.
......I believe God made everything.......
It is either that or everything made itself -- which is absurd. Logic demands that whoever or whatever made the universe is in itself/himself outside the universe, that is outside of time and space. Logic also requires that laws are pure products of mind. They are not physical. The laws by which the universe operates arose and exist apart from it and cause the time-matter-energy therein to behave in certain consistent ways. Science can test these laws and explore their operation. The complexity of operation of operation arising from these laws gives testimony of an awesome intelligent mind from which these laws were released. Genesis 1:1 clothes this event in human language. The Creator tells us that time-space (beginning- heavens) and matter-energy (earth) appeared out of nothing and immediately started to obey the laws ordained for them. It's fun and awe inspiring to study how that all works. Scientists are simply thinking God's thoughts after Him. It is a pity that so few of them wish to give Him credit for His grand design.
.....You don't have to have religion to make it make sense......
There are many things that don't make sense. That's why there isn't, and never has been a single human that was/isn't religious. Everybody has a world view and that is at the core of religion. The rest is just trappings. There is not now, and there has never been, a culture that did not have some form of religion. The human creature is incurably religious.
Science is the modern world view and therefore religion. It attempts to answer four questions every thinking human asks at some time in their life. 1) Who am I really? 2) Where did I come from, 3) Why am I here, 4) Where am I going after I die. Science cannot answer these, only faith can. Of all life forms on this planet, we have evidence that only people seek answers to these. God is the only one who gives satisfying answers to these.