...he says that GISS refused to give him the algorithm's source code.
Given that this is a government organization, I think the refusal to hand over the source code is wrong (obviously there is no national security concern). Could a FOIA request force this?
For, scientists working outside the government, I think providing the algorithm and data are sufficient, although even in those cases I would prefer that they open source (not necessarily GPL, though) their code. (We have.)
No, the AGW theory is based entirely on the tenuous idea that increased CO2 increases temperatures.
Good grief! Tenuous? Can you find a single scientific skeptic who denies that fundamental fact!?! (By scientific I mean holding a Ph.D. in a scientific, or even an engineering, field. Gene Ray, Doctor of Cubicism, doesn't count.)
If there is evidence that James Hanson was not releasing his code or data, I'd like to hear it.
Real science is "trust but verify".
Absolutely.
Yet instead of calling for a review of all the data and figuring out, for real, how bad the problem is, what we get is a political effort to firewall the contamination and an implied "let's not bother" checking the rest.
The thing is, I don't see that. What I see is a political effort to exaggerate uncertainty, a la Philip Cooney. Admittedly, I have a bias that colors how I perceive things. I trust that you realize your own bias as well, right?
The issue of educating the press about how to communicate science works both ways.
No doubt. Many scientists are appalled when the press tries to blame a single hot day/hot summer/hurricane/tornado on global warming. However, it should be noted that although the US temperatures are not major contributing factors to global warming, global temperatures are major contributing factors to US temperatures.
That means that the "9 hottest years"-record that you are referring to is negligibly important for global temperature when the temperatures considered are only the US ones!
I'm not sure what you're saying here. The "9 hottest years" record I'm referring to is referring to global temperatures, so it can't be negligibly important for global temperatures...
I believe that a reasonable scientific stance is one of skepticism.
Absolutely. I am as skeptical about global warming as I am about quantum physics. I know they both have flaws.
That would require for someone to know all inner workings of climate, and the magnitude and direction of all the feedbacks that models attempt to simulate.
Only if you're trying to get a perfect simulation. I run simulations on mammalian hippocampal structures, and I can guarantee you there's a lot I don't know about all the inner workings of it. Nevertheless, I'm able to not only recreate much of its functionality, but I'm also able to make testable predictions about what will happen in certain novel situations. Going back to the quantum physics comparison, there's a lot we don't know about the non-linearities inherent in quantum physics, yet we can still accomplish quite a bit with it.
But that means that it leaves the state of the science of climate change exactly as it was before, that is one of uncertainty. And this is not what James Hansen is being teaching us for the last few years.
How do you figure? Has James Hansen been teaching us that the science of climate change is perfect? If so, I'd appreciate a reference. Everyone acknowledges the uncertainty in climate change. You see those lines above and below the main line on the IPCC projections? Those are uncertainties.
Additionally, unlike in the past, the CO2 concentration in the oceans is increasing (causing them to become more acidic and destroying corals), not decreasing as temperature goes up. This is because the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing far faster than the temperature is increasing.
Do you have a reference for that, because I'm afraid I don't believe it. I think you're thinking of McIntyre's account of how he had difficulty in getting data and/or algorithms from Mann.
Compare two hypotheses: (1) Global warming is primarily caused by the sun, cosmic rays, or some other external factor. (2) Global warming is primarily caused by humans. (Yes, there are other possible hypotheses.)
If hypothesis 1 is right, you would expect most of the planets to be showing warming over any small period of time. If hypothesis 2 is right, you would expect approximately half of the other planets to be showing warming (and the other half to be showing cooling). Unfortunately, with 7 other planets, it's hard to rely on the law of large numbers to distinguish between these two hypotheses. (If you got 5 heads out of 7 coin flips, would you assume the coin was biased? The only thing you could say for certain was that heads weren't on both sides of the coin.) Of course, we don't even have data from all 7 of the other planets for a small period of time.
Global warming theories aren't based merely on the correlation between increased CO2 and increased temperature. They're based on fundamental science and complicated models. The fundamental science has been known for over 100 years - complicated models weren't necessary for that. The complicated models are necessary to determine the scope of the greenhouse gas phenomenon (feedback cycles, etc., are non-linear and hence can be very difficult to predict with detail). These models have actually done a pretty good job, and they're getting better. Some people are actually saying now, "In 20 years, this warming will be over, and then the scientists will see how wrong they are." Some people were saying that 20 years ago, too.
If the raw data is publicly available, it will give the people who want to deny basic science more ammunition for their inane babblings.
Give them more ammunition, please. That makes it that much easier to shoot themselves in the foot. Although I know from first hand experience that raw data is not routinely released to the general public, my experience is that it is usually released to those asking for it (I've never had any requests denied). I'm sure that there are some people who will be loathe to release their data to certain other people in any scientific discipline (scientists are people, after all), but withholding information gives them far more valuable information than releasing it all, publicly and freely. At this point, however, I am not aware of any global warming raw data that has not been released.
Although I love your Church references, the scientists did admit their mistake. They're not blaming the news organizations for reporting their error, they're blaming them for distorting their error. Understand the difference? Some news outlets pretended like this changed the whole "the 9 hottest years on record happened in the last decade" fact, when it did not. Prior to the change 1934 was the second hottest year in the US on record, and after the change it was the hottest year. Prior to the change several of the hottest years in the US on record were during the dust bowl, and after the change this is still true. The changes had no impact on which years were the hottest on a global scale, so the "9 hottest years" fact is still true. Do you understand how the right-wing media that you evidently get your talking points from distorted the truth now?
One thing I found particularly interesting was that the fee agreement between Ms. Foster and her attorneys called for a rate of $175 per hour. The requested reimbursement was for $225 per hour. While a fee arrangement is not binding, it is certainly instructive to the court as to the actual cost to Ms. Foster. Much of the reduction from $100k to $68k was from this one change.
Absolutely.
Similarly, the Judge refused to allow Ms. Foster's attorneys to bill $80 per hour for work by a paralegal. It seems perfectly reasonable to me not to include these costs. Basically, the Judge went through each bill and evaluated its reasonableness. Exactly my managing partner does to me each month and more importantly, exactly what the law requires in copyright cases.
Why shouldn't the paralegal's fees be included? Who should pay for that work to be done? If you're saying it's too expensive, I have no knowledge with which to disagree. But if you're saying it shouldn't be included at all, I'd have to disagree. Someone has to pay for the paralegal's work - why should it be Ms. Foster or the firm?
There *are* two genuine conflicting sides here and you can't just wave one of them away.
I can count at least 3, and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't a lot more. Between only telling the company about a discovered security flaw and immediately announcing it to the entire world is a whole range of possibilities. To name a few:
Initially tell only the company. If they do nothing, then release it to everyone.
Initially tell only the company, but tell them that you will release it to everyone in X days.
Initially tell the company and CC a few other white hats that you trust.
Initially tell the company and CC the better business bureau, etc.
(By "CC" I'm implying that you're letting the company know that you're telling other people.)
Conversely I would have something against it if the government wasted my money to keep a bunch of guys doing art for art sake, in some ivory tower where they don't actually have to fulfill any social need or appeal to anyone's taste.
If? Granted, the private sector (probably) provides the majority of funding for the arts, but a rather significant portion does indeed come from the public sector - at multiple levels of government. (I have no idea how significant - it might be less than 1%, although I doubt it. I'd still call that significant when we're talking about at least millions of dollars. Granted, this is still cheaper than the shuttle.)
Do you think art is a waste of time/money/resources as well? I won't debate your finer points about the relative merit about the Space Shuttle as realized versus what it could've/should've been (mainly because I have no idea, and think it's quite possible you're right), but I think that manned space travel is important in and of itself. Sure, anytime the government gets involved things tend to cost more than most of us (including me, in case that's not clear) think they should, but I think that's a separate problem from the value of manned space travel. I do agree, of course, that Bigelow (or similar strategies) might be a shining example that could yield the best results.
Most of the more controversial articles have reliable outside references that you can check. Just like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is merely a starting place for research and not the end all/be all.
The problem is that there are not and have never been any objective criteria for delegating power to accounts
It's not exactly "objective", but there are Requests for adminship that allow people to discuss why someone is or is not a good candidate for such power. Admins that repeatedly abuse their power tend to have that power stripped from them.
And in fifty years time, no-one will be listening to the vast majority of the "rap" rubbish that stupid chav scum play on their phones.
Timelessness is not synonymous with high quality. Many things can only be appreciated in the era that they were created (most of Stewart's and Colbert's material, for example), but that does not necessarily mean they are low quality. I won't claim that the vast majority of rap isn't rubbish, but I will not let you (implicitly) slander Stewart or Colbert!
IMO, however, it's overpriced insurance. I.e., the cost is much higher in the long run and not just slightly higher like you'd expect from decent insurance. Still, kudos for an excellent analogy. They're rare in/.:)
I read the entire series. We wouldn't really have to assume we'd find uninhabited raw resources at the destination. Presumably we would build probes to answer that question first. Of course, that adds time on to the trip - for the probe to get there and for us to get back the probe's signal. Presumably, we'd launch several probes to many nearby systems to increase our chances. Alternatively, if energy is no object, we can actually travel effectively faster than the speed of light even with current scientific understanding (notwithstanding the part about energy being no object). (By effectively faster, I mean that we could travel to a star 10 light years away in less than 10 years ship time, although more than 10 years will have passed on Earth. As we approach the speed of light, the distance gets contracted, thus allowing us to get there in a shorter amount of ship time)
The mentioned article on bicycle helmets is a masterpiece of crappy reasoning.
An excellent book that give numerous examples, statistics, etc., is "Why Things Bite Back" by Edward Tenner. I put it up there with "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (by Thomas Kuhn) as for how it altered my thinking. That said, the arguments put forth in Tenner's book don't lead you to the premise that bicycle helmets (or armed drones) are bad - just that they can have unintended consequences. You and dcollins both make excellent points, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive. People need to ask the tough questions about whether this could lead to an increased willingness to engage in unnecessary warfare.
But seriously, as crazy as your idea sounds (to me, at least), it's not as bad as it seems at first blush. Self-replicating machinery capable of using the asteroids to propagate themselves while creating this enormous "machine" could accomplish this. OTOH, they might decide that the solar system could use a little "cleansing".
What you're describing is similar to, but not exactly the same as, Pascal's wager. Sure, the cost would be significantly higher, but the odds are significantly lower (approaching zero). Psychology has well documented our inability to calculate the "expected cost" in such situations when we rely on common sense or "obviousness".
I hadn't heard about the Plesiadapiformes before. Unfortunately, after reading that article, I find that I still know almost nothing about them (except for what you said in your one sentence summary).
Cycle:Min Diversity:Max Diversity
1:59 My:74 My
2:115 My:121 My
3:177 My:184 My
4:250 My:273 My
5:298 My:308 My
6:372 My:400 My
7:441 My:454 My
8:497 My:501 My
My calculations:
MinAgeDiff:MaxAgeDiff
56 My:47 My
62 My:63 My
73 My:89 My
48 My:35 Mr
74 My:92 My
69 My:54 My
56 My:47 My
Personally, I'm not impressed by the 62 My period conclusion based on the data they provide. Just how approximate are we talking here?
Slashdot Mirror
Given that this is a government organization, I think the refusal to hand over the source code is wrong (obviously there is no national security concern). Could a FOIA request force this?
For, scientists working outside the government, I think providing the algorithm and data are sufficient, although even in those cases I would prefer that they open source (not necessarily GPL, though) their code. (We have.)
Additionally, unlike in the past, the CO2 concentration in the oceans is increasing (causing them to become more acidic and destroying corals), not decreasing as temperature goes up. This is because the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing far faster than the temperature is increasing.
Do you have a reference for that, because I'm afraid I don't believe it. I think you're thinking of McIntyre's account of how he had difficulty in getting data and/or algorithms from Mann.
Compare two hypotheses: (1) Global warming is primarily caused by the sun, cosmic rays, or some other external factor. (2) Global warming is primarily caused by humans. (Yes, there are other possible hypotheses.)
If hypothesis 1 is right, you would expect most of the planets to be showing warming over any small period of time. If hypothesis 2 is right, you would expect approximately half of the other planets to be showing warming (and the other half to be showing cooling). Unfortunately, with 7 other planets, it's hard to rely on the law of large numbers to distinguish between these two hypotheses. (If you got 5 heads out of 7 coin flips, would you assume the coin was biased? The only thing you could say for certain was that heads weren't on both sides of the coin.) Of course, we don't even have data from all 7 of the other planets for a small period of time.
Global warming theories aren't based merely on the correlation between increased CO2 and increased temperature. They're based on fundamental science and complicated models. The fundamental science has been known for over 100 years - complicated models weren't necessary for that. The complicated models are necessary to determine the scope of the greenhouse gas phenomenon (feedback cycles, etc., are non-linear and hence can be very difficult to predict with detail). These models have actually done a pretty good job, and they're getting better. Some people are actually saying now, "In 20 years, this warming will be over, and then the scientists will see how wrong they are." Some people were saying that 20 years ago, too.
Give them more ammunition, please. That makes it that much easier to shoot themselves in the foot. Although I know from first hand experience that raw data is not routinely released to the general public, my experience is that it is usually released to those asking for it (I've never had any requests denied). I'm sure that there are some people who will be loathe to release their data to certain other people in any scientific discipline (scientists are people, after all), but withholding information gives them far more valuable information than releasing it all, publicly and freely. At this point, however, I am not aware of any global warming raw data that has not been released.
Although I love your Church references, the scientists did admit their mistake. They're not blaming the news organizations for reporting their error, they're blaming them for distorting their error. Understand the difference? Some news outlets pretended like this changed the whole "the 9 hottest years on record happened in the last decade" fact, when it did not. Prior to the change 1934 was the second hottest year in the US on record, and after the change it was the hottest year. Prior to the change several of the hottest years in the US on record were during the dust bowl, and after the change this is still true. The changes had no impact on which years were the hottest on a global scale, so the "9 hottest years" fact is still true. Do you understand how the right-wing media that you evidently get your talking points from distorted the truth now?
- Initially tell only the company. If they do nothing, then release it to everyone.
- Initially tell only the company, but tell them that you will release it to everyone in X days.
- Initially tell the company and CC a few other white hats that you trust.
- Initially tell the company and CC the better business bureau, etc.
(By "CC" I'm implying that you're letting the company know that you're telling other people.)Do you think art is a waste of time/money/resources as well? I won't debate your finer points about the relative merit about the Space Shuttle as realized versus what it could've/should've been (mainly because I have no idea, and think it's quite possible you're right), but I think that manned space travel is important in and of itself. Sure, anytime the government gets involved things tend to cost more than most of us (including me, in case that's not clear) think they should, but I think that's a separate problem from the value of manned space travel. I do agree, of course, that Bigelow (or similar strategies) might be a shining example that could yield the best results.
Most of the more controversial articles have reliable outside references that you can check. Just like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is merely a starting place for research and not the end all/be all.
IMO, however, it's overpriced insurance. I.e., the cost is much higher in the long run and not just slightly higher like you'd expect from decent insurance. Still, kudos for an excellent analogy. They're rare in /. :)
I read the entire series. We wouldn't really have to assume we'd find uninhabited raw resources at the destination. Presumably we would build probes to answer that question first. Of course, that adds time on to the trip - for the probe to get there and for us to get back the probe's signal. Presumably, we'd launch several probes to many nearby systems to increase our chances. Alternatively, if energy is no object, we can actually travel effectively faster than the speed of light even with current scientific understanding (notwithstanding the part about energy being no object). (By effectively faster, I mean that we could travel to a star 10 light years away in less than 10 years ship time, although more than 10 years will have passed on Earth. As we approach the speed of light, the distance gets contracted, thus allowing us to get there in a shorter amount of ship time)
Why didn't I think of that! ;)
But seriously, as crazy as your idea sounds (to me, at least), it's not as bad as it seems at first blush. Self-replicating machinery capable of using the asteroids to propagate themselves while creating this enormous "machine" could accomplish this. OTOH, they might decide that the solar system could use a little "cleansing".
What you're describing is similar to, but not exactly the same as, Pascal's wager. Sure, the cost would be significantly higher, but the odds are significantly lower (approaching zero). Psychology has well documented our inability to calculate the "expected cost" in such situations when we rely on common sense or "obviousness".
I hadn't heard about the Plesiadapiformes before. Unfortunately, after reading that article, I find that I still know almost nothing about them (except for what you said in your one sentence summary).
We are advanced primates. We are great apes, not monkeys. And, I'm not completely sure about the advanced part, either... ;)
We'll have an infinite number of seasons!
Cycle:Min Diversity:Max Diversity
1:59 My:74 My
2:115 My:121 My
3:177 My:184 My
4:250 My:273 My
5:298 My:308 My
6:372 My:400 My
7:441 My:454 My
8:497 My:501 My
My calculations:
MinAgeDiff:MaxAgeDiff
56 My:47 My
62 My:63 My
73 My:89 My
48 My:35 Mr
74 My:92 My
69 My:54 My
56 My:47 My
Personally, I'm not impressed by the 62 My period conclusion based on the data they provide. Just how approximate are we talking here?